Pope Benedict Roundup!

• On Wednesday, January 27th, Pope Benedict dedicated his address during his general audience to St. Francis of Assisi - "an authentic "giant" of holiness, who continues to fascinate very many people of every age and every religion".

• Catholic Light relays the news that Pope Benedict will soon create a new commission to evaluate the controversial site of alleged apparitions of Medjugorje.

• "What a theologian-pope tells theology: Part I (1/25/10) | Part II (1/26/10) -- a conversation with Zenit's Mirko Testa and Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto, president of the Italian bishops' Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith, Proclamation and Catechesis, on Benedict XVI's recent commentaries on theology.

• "Habemus Papam ... Ratzinger!" -- Jay Anderson's contribution to the survey: "3 Words To Drive "Progressive" Catholics Crazy". =)

• "For God's sake, blog!" Pope Benedict told priests -- well, not quite in those words, but that was the gist of Pope Benedict's message for the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Communications:

  "Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources -- images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites -- which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis."

• Leading French philosopher Bernard-Henri LŽvy has published a defense of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Pius XII, criticizing the media's campaign of "disinformation" (Huffington Post January 24, 2010):

  It is time to put an end to the disingenuousness -- the bias, in a word -- and the disinformation concerning Benedict XVI.

  As soon as he was elected, the accusations of "ultraconservatism," taken up in a loop by the media, began -- as though a pope could, in fact, be anything but "conservative."

  There have been those excessive insinuations, if not crass jokes, about the "German pope," the "post-Nazi" in a cassock ...

  And now, this is the record, I was going to say the limit, with this visit to the synagogue in Rome, following visits to other synagogues in Cologne and New York: the same chorus of disinformers scarcely waited for him to cross the Tiber before announcing, urbi et orbi, that he had failed to find adequate words, hadn't made the appropriate gestures and, thus, hadn't quite pulled it off.

  Read the rest.

• In January, at a ceremony in the Vatican, the Pope was made an honorary citizen of the south German town of Freising. During the ceremony, he recalled his youthful days as a seminarian:

  In his improvised address, the Pope mentioned when the seminary of Freising reopened its doors to the group of aspirants to the priesthood.

  Part of the facilities had been turned into a military hospital for foreign prisoners of war awaiting repatriation. But the Pontiff recalled that despite the lack of space, there was an atmosphere of euphoria.

  "We were in dormitories, in classrooms, etc., but we were happy, not only because the miseries and threats of war and the Nazi power had gone, but also because we were free, and above all because we were on the path to which we felt we were called," he said. "We knew that Christ was stronger than tyranny, than the power of Nazi ideology and its mechanisms of oppression.

  "We knew that time and the future belong to Christ, and we knew that he had called us and that he needed us, that he was in need of us.

  "We knew that the people of those changing times were waiting for us; they were waiting for priests who would come with a new impulse of faith to build the living house of God."

  Then-Joseph Ratzinger was ordained, along with his brother, in the Cathedral of Freising on June 29, 1951.

• Pope Benedict confirmed that he will not let Cardinal Bertone retire, citing his "competence and generous devotion" his service as secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:

  "I have always admired his 'sensus fidei,' his doctrinal and canonical preparation and his 'humanitas,' which helped us very much to live, in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a climate of genuine familiarity, unity and a decisive and determined discipline of work," the Pope continued.

  "All these qualities were the reason that led me to the decision, in the summer of 2006, to appoint him my secretary of state, and are today the reason why, also in the future, I would not like to give up his valuable collaboration," he added.

• John Allen Jr. (National Catholic Reporter endeavors to make sense of Benedict's Jewish policy (The Forward January 20, 2010):

  After all, this is the pope who made a point of visiting a Cologne synagogue in 2005 on his first foreign trip, and Auschwitz on his second, only later to revive a controversial Good Friday prayer for the conversion of Jews. More recently, this is the pope who rehabilitated a Holocaust-denying traditionalist bishop and who announced that Pope Pius XII (whose alleged "silence" during the Holocaust remains a bone of contention between Jews and Catholics) is a step closer to sainthood, only to visit RomeÕs Great Synagogue on January 17 to express his "esteem and affection" for Judaism, and to pledge that the "faces, names, tears and desperation" of Holocaust victims must never be forgotten.

  So, the obvious question in many Jewish minds likely is: Will the real Benedict XVI please stand up?

  However understandable that reaction may be, there is actually a hermeneutic key to Benedict's papacy, one that lends logic to what can otherwise seem like maddening inconsistencies. ...

• According to Rome Reports, Benedict XVI will visit a Lutheran Church in Rome. The visit is scheduled for March 14th, 2010.

• Taylor Marshall (Canterbury Tales) responds to the query: Does the Pope Wear a White Jewish Yarmulke on His Head?

• "Because if you were going to build a Pope from scratch, he might look like this" Why I am Catholic January 21, 2010.