Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Here's a remarkable thing: Attendance in Peter's Square each Sunday for the Angelus with Pope Benedict XV is habitually more than twice that seen by his predecessor, John Paul II. But whereas John Paul II provided charisma and stardom, all that Benedict XVI offers is words. Even more remarkably, St. Peter's Square is impressively quiet when he speaks. At the end of his homilies, he starts to pray, without a pause, thus preventing any outbreak of applause.

And all this before an audience that includes people who don't go to mass every week — and many who don't go at all. Benedict XVI delivers his message with simple words, but these get attention. He reasons steadfastly, but serenely, and his criticisms of modernity are fully elaborated. He has practically silenced Catholic progressivism because it cannot summon arguments of similar persuasive power.

He shocked some last year when he received the idealistic Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci in private audience at Castel Gandolfo, and this September he met Henry Kissinger, the most realistic of the Realpolitik engineers. He shocked more on 12 September at the University of Regensburg when he delivered a lecture on the relationship between faith and reason. This "lectio magistralis" became the most controversial moment of the first year and a half of his pontificate. When he went to Turkey in November, he disappointed thousands of journalists eager for an East-West confrontation, but his first visit to a Muslim country was a virtuoso display of conciliation. Pope Benedict XVI is a man who makes news with his prose, but his words are far more than an intellectual exercise. That's why he's our Man of the Year.