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Benedict's Coat of Arms Gives Clues to Rule NewsMax.com WiresVATICAN CITY -- An American who has worked with Pope Benedict XVI has suggested the pope would embrace sharing more power with local bishops - a big issue in the United States, where Catholics have sometimes chafed under Rome's control. Dominican Rev. Augustine Di Noia, undersecretary in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told Vatican Radio Wednesday that it was "significant" that the pope had included the bishop's miter in his papal coat of arms rather than the traditional papal tiara. Story Continues Below He said the choice indicated Benedict didn't want to be seen as a "monarch" but rather as the bishop of Rome who wanted to see more collegiality in the church, the Vatican term for power-sharing with local bishops. "It can be seen to express an enthusiastic embrace of collegiality," Di Noia said. Catholics in the United States have sometimes chafed about the level of control the Vatican exercised over the U.S. church during Pope John Paul II's tenure. Others, though, say Rome had to step in because the bishops were too lax in keeping the faith. Many people will be looking to the next Synod of Bishops - the meetings that bring bishops from around the world to Rome to discuss and advise on topics assigned by the pope - for a sense of the new pope's policies. On Wednesday, Benedict confirmed the synod would take place Oct. 2-23, the Vatican said. Di Noia made the comments in a lengthy interview with Vatican Radio about his impressions of the new pope gleaned by working for the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog office. "He's a person of real dedication, disciplined, focused in many ways. I suppose academic in the sense of a dedicated man who reads a lot and thinks a lot and writes a lot and is willing to share his knowledge with anyone who's willing to listen or talk with him," Di Noia said. He said the pope had a "tremendous inner tranquility" and followed the church's liturgical calendar in his own spirituality, which he described as "almost monastic." He said Ratzinger, for example, would usually take this time of year as a retreat and was a great devotee of St. Augustine and St. Benedict. Di Noia said he was "exasperated" by the labels placed on Benedict in the media and elsewhere that he was a cold, office-bound conservative. He said a more appropriate label would be that he is "tradition-minded." He said Benedict saw the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council less as a series of meetings that brought the church into the modern world than as a "recovery of the deepest sort of identity of the Catholic tradition going back all the way to the scriptures, the fathers of the church and the liturgy." Di Noia urged the faithful and others not to speculate about the pope's future policies, saying such musings were "as if we're talking about the transition from President Clinton to President Bush." "The pope is more bound to be faithful to the tradition than any of us are," Di Noia said. "He is its articulator, and for him, the tradition is what he's received. He is the successor of Peter. Just as Peter received the Gospel and the message of the salvation of the world from our Lord ... so does the successor of Peter." © 2005 The Associated Press
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