The Pope of the Young

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - May 6, 2005

Prior to the papal conclave, I was asked hundreds of times by parishioners, friends, guys at the health club, and reporters, who I thought the next Pope would be.

My staple response — and evasion — was that predicting the next Holy Father is kind of like picking, at the beginning of March madness, who will soon be crowned NCAA basketball champion. You can identify pretty easily those who are the solid contenders, those who really have no chance, and those who have little chance but might turn out to be the equivalent of Villanova 1985. But the simple rule is you just never know who's going to win

I readily diverted the questions to what I thought would be the major criterion on the Cardinals' minds as they entered the Sistine Chapel: how the new Holy Father would "play in Cologne" during World Youth Day in August.

The dramatic outpouring of young people, making countless physical and financial sacrifices, to get to Rome and wait for hours in line to spend 30 seconds at Pope John Paul II's bier had to have, I thought, a profound impact on the Cardinal-electors.

I anticipated that they would recognize that all of the other stated challenges for the next pope — the aggressive secularization of western culture, the rise of fundamentalist Islam, the lack of unity among Christians, the demographic suicide of the northern hemisphere, the proselytism and poverty in the southern hemisphere, the whole problem of Asia — would be too big for a new pope to handle on his own. These were challenges that could be met only by Christ's whole Mystical Body working together, head and members. And they would have to be met with the Catholic leaders of the future.

One out of every 1500 people in the world — the majority of whom were young — came to pay their respects to Pope John Paul II and the Cardinals saw in this overwhelmingly young army the seeds of the new Springtime that John Paul II had persistently announced, that perhaps would blossom only after he, like a grain of wheat, had fallen to the earth and died.

Heading into the conclave, I thought that this priority toward the young would translate into the election of a younger Cardinal — like Christoph Schonborn of Austria or Angelo Scola of Venice — both of whom have dynamic personalities and lots of experience energizing young Catholics.

When Cardinal Ratzinger was announced as Pope Benedict XVI, my second reaction — my first was euphoria! — was a humble recognition that my "Cologne criterion" had proven to be false. The Cardinals had elected a 78 year old scholar and teacher, not someone with the electrifying charisma that was so palpable in John Paul II.

I mentioned this to some of the young priests with whom I was on retreat the day of the election. Their reactions helped to convince me that I wasn't as wrong as I thought I was.

The first priest, ordained a couple of years ago for a diocese in Ohio, said with joy and earnestness, "This election is a validation of everything I laid down my life for!"

The second priest, ordained last year in Virginia, asked rhetorically, "Other than Pope John Paul II, is there anyone more admired among faithful Catholics of our generation than Cardinal Ratzinger?" He punctuated his statement by saying, "I can't be more elated!"

Those comments got me wondering. I thought back to my days in college and how energized I was , at 19, reading the Ratzinger Report for the first time. I learned so much from the Bavarian Cardinal's comments on the state of the Church and the world that I soon passed to reading his other books. By the time I finished college, I had read a half-dozen and passed them on to friends. Throughout my years in seminary, I read and re-read about a half-dozen others.

I came to the conclusion that during my young adult years — I'm now 35 — there has been no one, besides John Paul II, I have admired more than the man who became his successor. And I knew that, like with the other priests on retreat, there are thousands of young people like me spread in Catholic countries throughout the world.

Throughout an era where there was much confusion in the teaching and practice of the Catholic faith, Cardinal Ratzinger, like John Paul II, has been a real source of strength, by equipping young people with the categories to understand the roots of the problems and by proposing, with great persuasiveness, Jesus Christ as the solution to what plagues our time. For young Catholics who were hungering to be fed with a feast of faith, Cardinal Ratzinger has been the head chef.

At the homily of his installation Mass, our new Holy Father continued doing what he has spent his entire adult life doing, as a priest, professor, bishop and Cardinal: passing on with great precision and clarity the splendor of the truth of the Catholic faith. And young Catholics, present in great numbers in St. Peter's Square, continued enthusiastically to cheer him on.

"The Church is alive," he said, "and the Church is young. She holds within herself the future of the world and therefore shows each of us the way toward the future."

He's going to play great in Cologne.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.