Security of Faith and Hope to Humanity
Jul 15, 2005
I am very happy that we have a new Pope who is very similar in many aspects to his predecessor. It is an established fact that he was a great friend of John Paul II, his right-hand man, and so many of the great projects of the preceding Pontiff can be continued. By Cardinal Paul Shan Kuo-hsi, Bishop of Kaohsiung (Taiwan)
(30Days, May 2005) The new Pope is a man of profound faith. Thus even if in a secularized society there are all kinds of doctrinal winds and waves – that people are induced to follow, and often don’t know where to go anymore because they have lost direction, the sense of life, the meaning of things – this Pope with his profound faith in God and in Jesus, knows in a very clear way in what direction the Church and humanity are going.
And then he is a great theologian, he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and guardian of the faith of the Church for a quarter of a century; he has a very clear vision and perspective, something that the Church and humanity as a whole are in need of. I expect this new Pope will above all give a sense of security to the Church.
He knows that in the last decades, following the winds of different doctrines and faiths, that Christians themselves have become “cafeteria” Christians, they pick and choose, they take one thing and refuse another, they no longer know that the faith has value in its fullness and asks to be taken in its totality, it can’t be cut into pieces without losing its authenticity. This Pope can give us the certainty of faith.In the second place, Pope Benedict can bring light and hope to humanity.
Many young people seek a guide for their future, a light, a hope that neither their teachers nor their governments can offer. There is great confusion, and the Pope can offer a light, not his own, but that of the Lord Jesus, who said of himself: «I am the light of the world; whoever follows me, will not walk in the darkness», because only in Jesus Christ do we have hope and light.
Thirdly, his name, Benedict, is beautiful, that of the patron saint of Western Europe. John Paul II came from Eastern Europe, which he freed from atheistic communism. Today Western Europe is very secularized and the faith greatly weakened. As Saint Benedict and his monks maintained the Christian culture and tradition in Europe during the barbarian invasions, so Pope Benedict can revitalize the traditions and the roots of European culture and society.
We know, too, that in 1914, at the beginning of the First World War, Pope Benedict XV was elected who did not want and did not love the war, but constantly sought peace and reconciliation. And we recall also that he wrote – and the impact that it had was great – the celebrated Apostolic Letter Maximum illud to promote missionary activities, among which the creation and formation of native clergy in the mission lands.
This Pope also will do his utmost for the missions and for new local vocations; he will bring a greater evangelization to the world. I hope that, in taking care of the mission lands, he will follow his predecessor John Paul II who, in 1995 in Manila, talking to the Federation of the Episcopal Conferences of Asia, said that the third millennium would be that of the evangelization of Asia, and he repeated this in his apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Asia, after the Synod of Asian bishops.
For Pope Wojtyla, the first millennium had seen the evangelization of the Mediterranean, the second that of the Americas, north and south, and of part of Africa, and therefore the third millennium would be reserved for Asia. I hope that this was not only his wish or his prayer, but also a prophecy that I hope the new Pope can also adhere to. Finally, I hope that under the guidance of Pope Benedict XVI theologians can find new terms to present our faith in an acceptable manner to the modern world, and comprehensibly to ordinary people.I offer these hopes of mine to the new Pope.
Security of Faith and Hope to Humanity