An Attic: Light of the World: Becoming Pope

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Light of the World: Becoming Pope

From Light of the World

Holy Father, on April 16, 2005, your seventy-eighth birthday, you told your co-workers how much you were looking forward to your retirement. Three days later you were the leader of the universal Church with 1.2 billion members. Not exactly a project that one saves for his old age.

Actually I had expected finally to have some peace and quiet. The fact that I suddenly found myself facing this tremendous task was, as everybody knows, a shock for me. The responsibility is in fact enormous.

There was the moment when, as you later said, you felt just as if "a guillotine" were speeding down to you.

Yes, the thought of the guillotine occurred to me: Now it falls down and hits you. I have been so sure that this office was not my calling, but that God would not grant me some peace and quiet after strenuous years. But then I could only say, explain to myself: God's will is apparently otherwise, and something new and completely different is beginning for me. He will be with me.

In the so-called "room of tears" during a conclave three sets of robes lie waiting for the future Pope. One is long, one short, one middle-sized. What was going through your head in that room, in which so many new Pontiffs are said to have broken down? Does on wonder again here, at the very latest: Why me? What does God want of me?

Actually at that moment one is first of all occupied by very practical, external things. One has to see how to deal with the robes and such. Moreover I knew that very soon I would have to say a few words out on the balcony, and I began to think about what I could say. Besides, even at that moment when it hit me, all I was able to say to the Lord was simply: "What are you doing with me? Now the responsibility is yours. You must lead me! I can't do it. If you wanted me, than you must also help me!" In this sense, I stood, let us say, in an urgent dialogue relationship with the Lord: if he does the one thing he must also do the other.

...
You did not want to become a bishop, you did not want to become Prefect, you did not want to become Pope. Isn't it frightening when things repeatedly happen quite against your own will?
It is like this: When a man says Yes during his priestly ordination, he may have some idea of what his own charism could be, but he also knows: I have placed myself into the hands of the bishop and ultimately of the Lord. I cannot pick and choose what I want. In the the nation that being a theology professor was my charism, and I was very happy when my idea became a reality. But it was also clear to me: I am always in the Lord's hand, and I must also be prepared for things that I do not want. in this sense it was certainly surprising suddenly to be snatched away and no longer to be able to follow my own path. But as I said, the fundamental Yes also contained the thought that I remain at the Lord's disposal and perhaps will also have to do things someday that I myself would not like.