Hats off, Benedict!
From Pope Benedict XVI's greeting to the pilgrims yesterday evening in Roncalliplatz in Cologne: "Along with Jerusalem the 'Holy City', Rome the 'Eternal City' and Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Cologne, thanks to the Magi, has become down the centuries one of the most important places of pilgrimage in the Christian West. Yet Cologne is not just the city of the Magi. It has been deeply marked by the presence of many saints; these holy men and women, through the witness of their lives and the imprint they left on the history of the German people, have helped Europe to grow from Christian roots...
... In Cologne Saint Thomas Aquinas was a disciple of Saint Albert and later a professor. Nor can we forget Blessed Adolph Kolping, who died in Cologne in 1865; from a shoemaker he became a priest and founded many social initiatives, especially in the area of professional training. Closer to our own times, our thoughts turn to Edith Stein, the eminent twentieth-century Jewish philosopher who entered the Carmelite Convent in Cologne taking the name of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, and later died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Pope John Paul II canonized her and declared her a co-patroness of Europe, together with Saint Bridget of Sweden and Saint Catherine of Siena."
If proof that Benedict is no John Paul was needed, his reticence yesterday revealed it, but no one really expected it to be otherwise. Instead of a performer, we've got theologian and a thinker who loves the legacy he's inherited. JPII was a man of the gesture; B16 is a man of the word: "In these and all the other saints, both known and unknown, we discover the deepest and truest face of this city and we become aware of the legacy of values handed down to us by the generations of Christians who have gone before us. It is a very rich legacy. We need to be worthy of it. It is a responsibility of which the very stones of the city's ancient buildings remind us. Indeed it is these spiritual values that make possible mutual comprehension between individuals and peoples, between different cultures and civilizations..." Beautiful.
