July 24, 2005
Franciscans and the New Pope
Now that two months have passed since the election of Pope Benedict XVI, one can stop for a minute in the midst of all the publicity and ask what the response of our community is to the first days of this new pontiff? It’s almost impossible to speak for the whole Franciscan family because it’s so diverse – and opinions on this and many other matters vary considerably. One can only say that in the Franciscans of the Renewal there was great enthusiasm and rejoicing at the election of Cardinal Ratzinger because he has been a champion of the complete and orthodox Catholic faith and a perfect gentleman with anyone who meets him. Since I had that privilege of meeting him on several occasions, I was able to reassure the friars and sisters that the new pope was a gracious gentleman and had shown himself interested in our little community in the various encounters we had had, both in this country and once in the Vatican.
Since coming to the Chair of St. Peter, contrary to all expectations, Benedict XVI has been received with the greatest enthusiasm. At St. Peter’s they’re hardly able to manage the crowds that come for the Wednesday audiences and for the Sunday Masses. Amazingly, they exceed the crowds that came for our most beloved Pope John Paul II. The media, from originally being its usual hostile self, has moved much more positively toward a cautious admiration of the new pope. Naturally a time will come when the media will quibble and perhaps turn on the pope. One has to expect that because the media is dominated by forces that are anti-Christian and anti-human. There are times when dealing with some aspects of the media that I think I can smell the diabolical. “By their fruits you shall know them.” But strangely, in both the case of the great John Paul II and of Benedict XVI, they are being more open to the pope and indirectly more open to the Catholic Church. Stay tuned!
It was with great appreciation and joy that I received a notification from Cardinal Edward Egan of New York that he had responded to my request to obtain admission to the papal audience for forty of our friars after World Youth Day in Cologne. A friend is paying for a bus for the friars to go from Germany to Assisi and one day they will go in the early morning for the papal audience. How I wish I could be with them, but I am so pleased to know that we will have this very representative group meet the Holy Father, as a handful of us met his successor years ago when we were first getting started.
I hope you will join all the Franciscans of the Renewal in praying fervently every day for our Pope that he will have the strength and the continued courage and insight to take up where his holy predecessor left off. I think if you could ask any one of us, we would say, “Long live the Pope.”
Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR
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