Before the Pope’s plane even landed
Benedict held a press conference on his way to Australia, just as he did en route to America, once again startling journalists. They weren’t surprised that he answered questions. They were surprised that he directed considerably serious attention to global climate issues.
Pope Benedict XVI is always startling in his clarity.
TEN kilometres above the earth, the Pope delivered a message to the people of Sydney: the world is God’s creation and humanity needs to safeguard it against the ravages of climate change.
His message, unexpected and delivered in Italian, called for a spiritual response to the environmental crisis and asked Catholics – especially young people – to find “a way of living, a style of life that eases the problems caused to the environment”.
“We need to rediscover our earth in the face of our God and creator and to re-find our responsibilities in front of our maker and the creatures of the earth he has placed in our hands in trust,” he said.
“We need to reawaken our conscience … I want to give impulse to rediscovering our responsibilities and to finding an ethical way to change our way of life and ways to respond to these great challenges.”
The Vatican has been ‘going green’ for some time, but he tried to emphasize the environment as creation.
He also directly addressed the priest abuse scandal, as he had on the flight to America.
“The first dimension is our moral teaching – we must be clear and it has always been clear from the very first centuries – that being a priest is incompatible with this behaviour because being a priest is the service of our Lord … our Lord is very clear on this.
“If there was insufficient education and teaching, if in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s there was an idea of proportionality … there is never such a thing as proportionality … pedophilia is always bad. I want to clarify that.
Clarity is a trademark of this professor pope.
AS one would expect of the leader of a billion Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI is a leading theologian, one of the major thinkers of our age.
But he is also a sharpshooter – the kind of man who can explain complex ideas in simple ways, and then act decisively.
People everywhere welcome his gifts. As a young Catholic studying in a modern university where relativism and other intellectual trends pushed against Christian truth, beauty and goodness- I often found Benedict to be speaking directly to those who wanted to push back.
But even non-Catholics have something to learn from him.
We saw that on his US visit. They’re seeing it already in Australia.