VATICAN CITY, 26 April 2005 — The new Pope Benedict praised dialogue with Muslims for the first time yesterday and issued another call for Christian unity, renewing a theme he has made a hallmark of the early days of his papacy.
At a separate audience for some of the German pilgrims who flocked to his inaugural Mass on Sunday, the Bavarian-born former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger also showed a touch of his human side — cracking his first papal joke.
He apologized to the crowd for arriving late, but said his lack of famed German punctuality might be a sign that “I have become a bit of an Italian”.
“I have been in Rome for 23 years, but I am still a Bavarian,” he then said to cheers.
Ratzinger, 78, had a reputation in some quarters for austere conservatism as the Vatican’s long-serving enforcer of orthodoxy at the head of the Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
He dismayed Protestants, Buddhists and Hindus with criticisms of their faiths in that role and upset secular but mainly Muslim Turkey last year with opposition to the country’s quest to join the European Union.
Since his election as Roman Catholic Pontiff at a secret conclave of cardinals last Tuesday, however, he has gone out of his way to stress Christian unity and inter-faith dialogue.
At a reception yesterday for some of the leaders of other religions who attended his inauguration, he acknowledged Muslim clerics in the group and said the Church wanted to continue to build “bridges of friendship” with other religions.
He said he appreciated the “growth of dialogue between Muslims and Christians, both at a local and international level”.
Though Benedict greeted “believers and non-believers alike” in his first public sermon on Sunday, it was the first time he had referred specifically to Islam.
He also renewed previous pledges to pursue paths to Christian unity, telling Protestant and Orthodox Christian leaders that such steps were in the interests of peace.
Comparisons
The late Pope John Paul enjoyed enormous respect from non-Catholics for his efforts to forge closer ties to other branches of Christianity and other religions, including groundbreaking reconciliation with Jews.
Catholics and others are also looking to see whether the shy, bookish Benedict can assume the “man of the people” mantle that the globetrotting John Paul wore so comfortably during his 26-year reign.
Benedict spent four minutes shaking hands with German yesterday as he walked to the front of the audience hall, in his first close-up encounter with the sort of adulation that greeted John Paul wherever he went.
Though he smiled and reached out to the waiting hands, Benedict appeared nervous and looked away from the adoring faces for most of his passage down the aisle.
Some of the Germans in the crowd of 400,000 who filled St. Peter’s Square for Sunday’s Mass were disappointed that “their” Pope had spoken only in Latin and Italian at the service.
Benedict made up for it yesterday and also confirmed his hope to visit the German city of Cologne for Catholic World Youth Day later this year.
He asked the pilgrims from his native Germany for their “understanding” if he makes mistakes, calling for their help and their trust as he begins his pontificate.
“Let’s walk together, I trust in your help and I ask your understanding if I make mistakes, as happens to every man. I ask you to give me your trust,” Benedict XVI said in his mother tongue.
Earlier, in his private audience with the leaders of other religions and Christian Churches, he said that though the world was often marked by violence and war, “it earnestly longs for peace, peace which is above all a gift from God, peace for which we must pray without ceasing.”
“Our efforts to come together and foster dialogue are a valuable contribution to building peace on solid foundations,” he added.
The new pope said it was “imperative to engage in authentic and sincere dialogue, built on respect for the dignity of every human person, created, as we Christians firmly believe, in the image and likeness of God.”
