Josef Joffe: A German Pope--Really?

Josef Joffe, in the WSJ (4-22-05):

[Mr. Joffe is publisher and editor of the German weekly Die Zeit and Abramowitz Fellow of Stanford's Hoover Institution.]

... Those who insist on putting a national label on Benedict XVI should actually prefer "Roman" to "German." For the last quarter-century, his spiritual and physical home has been the Vatican. More importantly, he was no believer in decentralization, an issue particularly dear to the German bishops who have argued that the "catholic," that is, "all-encompassing" church should not act as the "all-grasping" one, but rather allot more powers to the national churches.

Hence the measured applause that goes hand in glove with the more passionately uttered hope that Benedict XVI will be a different person than the 78-year-old Joseph Ratzinger. The new pope's first pronouncements lend some substance to these hopes because he has emphasized openness and ecumenism. And why not? It is the office that molds the man, as so many American Supreme Court justices have demonstrated by forsaking, or at least muting, their previous convictions.

Yet when everything is said and done, the fact remains that Benedict XVI is the first German pope since...when? Some argue that the last German pope was Victor II, who occupied the Holy See from 1055 to 1057. Others retort that the last to be so anointed was Hadrian II (1522-1523), which is a shaky claim because that pope was born in Utrecht, a city of the Netherlands today, but that was then part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. So take your pick. Benedict XVI is the first German pope in either 500 or 1000 years.

Is there a deeper meaning in these wildly disparate numbers? Germans have been quick to opine that the elevation of Cardinal Ratzinger, who briefly belonged to the Hitler Youth in his very young days, spells out a final gesture of reconciliation with Germany's gruesome history in the 20th century. As reassuring as this interpretation is, it seems off the mark. For Joseph Ratzinger is not "German" in the way Wojtyla was "Polish."

By residence, and certainly in spirit, Benedict is a Roman, a man of the Vatican's inner sanctum, a fierce and articulate protector of Rome's primacy in the affairs of the Church. Or look at it this way: If his election was a gesture or reconciliation, why wasn't there a German pope in 500 or a thousand years when Germany was no higher on the scale of evil than everybody else? The ways of the Church, one must conclude, do not mirror the instant wisdom produced by us secularists. Its timeline is a bit longer than the deadline for tomorrow's editorial page.