|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
New Pope Showing Warmth and Humor in Meetings NewsMax.com WiresVATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI is showing his humorous side and that he knows how to work a crowd, traits the public rarely saw during his quarter-century as the stern German guardian of the church's conservative doctrine. In the first glimpse of what went on inside his mind during last week's conclave, Benedict said Monday he prayed to be passed over as pontiff because there were younger candidates and that when it become clear he would be elected it felt like "the guillotine." Story Continues Below He kissed babies and chuckled as he held an audience with German pilgrims - tens of thousands had flocked to his installation a day earlier - and gave a homily at a Rome basilica, St. Paul Outside the Walls. To his compatriots, he first apologized for being late, saying a meeting with religious leaders had run over time. "The Germans are used to punctuality," he joked. "I'm already very Italian." Thousands later packed the evening service, where the pope held a biblical reading from the apostle Paul to the Romans - to show his connection to the city of Rome, where he is bishop. Anja Tartarini, a 31-year-old actress who lined up early, suggested the new pope is winning fans despite the inevitable comparisons to John Paul II, his predecessor who died April 2. "He's sweet and nice and strong. He has a different kind of charisma from John Paul," she said . "He says he feels inadequate like a child, but with unbelievable humility he accepted this task." Benedict was elected the first German pope in centuries on April 19 after four rounds of voting in 24 hours, one of the fastest conclaves in 100 years. While he had been a leading candidate, 78 is considered old to be elected pope. "As the trend in the ballots slowly made me realize that, in a manner of speaking, the guillotine would fall on me, I started to feel quite dizzy," Benedict said in his native German at the audience, smiling and chuckling. "I thought that I had done my life's work and could now hope to live out my days in peace. "I told the Lord with deep conviction, 'Don't do this to me. You have younger and better (candidates) who could take up this great task with a totally different energy and with different strength."' "Evidently, this time He didn't listen to me," Benedict joked. He said that during the secret deliberations, a fellow cardinal had written him a note, reminding him of the sermon he delivered during the funeral Mass for Pope John Paul II, in which he referred to a biblical passage where God tells the apostle Peter to follow him. "My fellow brother wrote me: 'If the Lord should now tell you, 'Follow me,' then remember what you preached. Do not refuse. Be obedient. ...This touched my heart. The ways of the Lord are not comfortable, but we were not created for comfort, but for greatness, for good." "So in the end, all I could do was say yes. I am trusting in God, and I am trusting in you, dear friends." The new pope met with religious leaders who attended his installation Mass Sunday. He told Muslim representatives in particular that he wanted to continue building "bridges of friendship" that he said could foster peace in the world. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams; Metropolitan Chrisostomos, a top envoy for Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Christian Orthodox Church; and a senior representative of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Kirill, attended the Mass. Williams said after Monday's meeting that he was "encouraged by the way Pope Benedict went out of his way to underline the commitment to ecumenism," both in his homily Sunday and his message Monday. He called the new pope "extremely intelligent and sympathetic to the ecumenical movement" and said he had invited him to visit Britain. In Moscow, the head of Russia's Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II, said a visit by Benedict to Russia would only be possible after the two churches resolve their longtime differences. Relations between the world's two largest Christian communities have been tense amid Russian allegations of Catholic poaching of Orthodox believers. The tensions prevented John Paul from visiting Russia _ a trip he had hoped to make as part of his efforts to reconcile the two churches. © 2005 The Associated Press
Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: |
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
| All Rights Reserved © 2010 NewsMax.Com |