A different pope for a different time

c. 2008 Religion News Service NEW YORK _ The last time the papal airplane, Shepherd One, lifted off from an airport here, its most important passenger could look outside and see that extraordinary architectural achievement, the twin towers of the World Trade Center. In 1995, that passenger was John Paul II, a different pope. The […]

c. 2008 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ The last time the papal airplane, Shepherd One, lifted off from an airport here, its most important passenger could look outside and see that extraordinary architectural achievement, the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

In 1995, that passenger was John Paul II, a different pope. The leader of the world’s 1 billion Roman Catholics is now Benedict XVI, and his view of the World Trade Center was horrifyingly different. On Sunday (April 20), he descended to a pit where once the towers stood.


A different pope, looking out on a different vista. A different pope, leaving a very different country, with different hopes and different horrors.

In 1995, 9/11 was an unimportant date. Iraq was a symbol of American military and diplomatic success, and any reference to sex-abuse scandals was not linked to the word “priest.”

Immigration was how our families got here, not a divisive argument of perceived threat to national security.

And New Orleans music, which played so prominent a role in the performance Sunday at Yankee Stadium, was simply New Orleans music, not yet a reminder of a heartbreaking human tragedy and policy failure.

So, it was fitting that the messages of the two different supreme Catholic leaders, then in 1995 and now, were very different. John Paul II came here as the authoritative leader of the church, steadfast in his defense of the church’s position on women and abortion.

The defense of life before birth was very much present in the homily given by John Paul II in the torrential rain that greeted him at Giants Stadium. He declared it a tragedy that “innocent human beings are considered inconvenient.”

He spoke, too, of ecumenism, as if the only important religious schisms were between the Catholic Church and other faiths.


But not Benedict XVI. His trip to this country began with an extraordinary apology for the hurt done by the priests who molested children and their supervisors who tried to cover up the scandal _ a theme to which he returned repeatedly in his brief stay here and in Washington.

This was not a pontiff supremely confident in the unity of the church. He was less concerned about ecumenism than he was about healing divisions in his own church. A healing that, both at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Saturday and Yankee Stadium on Sunday, he said will come _ not from blind obedience _ but from a newfound respect for differences. He used the constellation of Catholic sainthood as a metaphor for his vision:

“Fix your gaze upon our saints. The diversity of their experience of God’s presence prompts us to discover anew the breadth and depth of Christianity. Let your imaginations soar freely among the limitless expanse of the horizons of Christian discipleship.”

Benedict has been characterized as an enforcer of orthodoxy. But not on this trip. Here, although his intellect was obvious, he was not _ like his predecessor _ the church prince come to constrain a wavering flock. Instead, he referred to himself as the “poor successor of St. Peter,” come to comfort, not to lecture _ come to listen and to learn.

His views certainly are no different than those of John Paul II on say, abortion. But this pope visited seriously disabled children, reminding people not of the sin of abortion, but rather that God blesses each of us “with differing talents and gifts.”

And he honored the diversity born of immigration to the United States, with significant portions of the Masses he celebrated recited in Spanish. The departure ceremony from JFK International Airport was an ethnic festival that included adults and children dressed in costumes from countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.


At ground zero on Sunday, two groups of very loud demonstrators shouted at each other _ one insisting God hated child molesters and homosexuals, the other simply chanting patriotic slogans.

They really were not answering each other. They were simply shouting. Making noise.

Not far away, Benedict XVI prayed quietly in an awful pit, asking that the shouting stop, that God “bring healing” to a country very different from the one visited 13 years ago by a very different pope.

(Bob Braun writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

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Photos of Pope Benedict XVI at Yankee Stadium are available via https://religionnews.com.

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