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Jun 2, 2:46 PM (ET)
By FRANCES D’EMILIO
VATICAN CITY (AP) - No ghostwriter needed here. By most accounts, Pope Benedict XVI has been busy writing his own speeches as he grows into his new role as pastor of the world’s Roman Catholics.
That hands-on approach by the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was a theology lecturer at German universities before becoming a Vatican insider, sharply contrasts with his predecessor, John Paul II, who gave so many speeches he needed an assembly line of wordsmiths to produce them.
John Paul often delivered several speeches a day to audiences ranging from garbage collectors in Rome to Aborigines in Australia, and the Vatican “had to create an office to write them,” said former Vatican diplomat John-Peter Pham. The skills of diplomats and other Holy See officials and consultants were tapped in the process.
“John Paul wrote very few of his speeches,” although he occasionally “changed a phrase here or there,” according to Pham.
The late pope chose as his speechwriter an Italian archbishop in the Secretariat of State, Archbishop Paolo Sardi, Pham said. Sardi’s official title is apostolic nuncio with special tasks.
Sardi declined to be interviewed about the Vatican’s speechwriting system, but another official in the Secretariat of State said Benedict has kept the job to himself.
The 78-year-old Benedict writes his own speeches, though that might change as the papal workload grows, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his position.
That Benedict is a man of his own words seemed clear from his first speech as pontiff, a long discourse in Latin, delivered to cardinals on April 20 in the Sistine Chapel where he had been elected less than 24 hours before.
“I’d hate to put it this way, but there would be very few people capable of writing that speech in Latin, just on that criterion alone,” said Pham.
The speechwriting flair of the former Cardinal Ratzinger started drawing the general public’s attention a few weeks before he was elected pope.
At John Paul’s request, he composed the brief meditations and prayers that were read aloud at the Good Friday Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum on March 25.
Ratzinger, a theologian more accustomed to lecturing to doctoral students than preaching to pilgrims, came up with several sound bites in a vivid, plain talk.
The words of one of the prayers he penned floated on a sea of metaphors drawn from everyday life: “Lord, your church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side. In your field we see more weeds than wheat. The soiled garments and face of your church throw us into confusion.”
In one meditation, Ratzinger, who had served since 1981 as the Vatican’s guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy, denounced “filth” in the Church, including in the priesthood, in an apparent reference to the sex abuse scandals that shook faithful around the world.
Ratzinger, in his years in Germany as a theology professor, was renowned for his writings. But one of his former students, the Rev. Vincent Twomey, observed that many were lectures that had been recorded and then transcribed.
A professor of moral theology at the Pontifical University, St. Patrick’s College, in Maynooth, Ireland, Twomey said that a Ratzinger lecture stood out for “its clarity, its logical progression and the quality of its expression.”
“When he speaks, the Germans have a word for it - ‘Druckreif’ - it’s ready for publication,” he said. . . .
Full article
By FRANCES D’EMILIO
VATICAN CITY (AP) - No ghostwriter needed here. By most accounts, Pope Benedict XVI has been busy writing his own speeches as he grows into his new role as pastor of the world’s Roman Catholics.
That hands-on approach by the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was a theology lecturer at German universities before becoming a Vatican insider, sharply contrasts with his predecessor, John Paul II, who gave so many speeches he needed an assembly line of wordsmiths to produce them.
John Paul often delivered several speeches a day to audiences ranging from garbage collectors in Rome to Aborigines in Australia, and the Vatican “had to create an office to write them,” said former Vatican diplomat John-Peter Pham. The skills of diplomats and other Holy See officials and consultants were tapped in the process.
“John Paul wrote very few of his speeches,” although he occasionally “changed a phrase here or there,” according to Pham.
The late pope chose as his speechwriter an Italian archbishop in the Secretariat of State, Archbishop Paolo Sardi, Pham said. Sardi’s official title is apostolic nuncio with special tasks.
Sardi declined to be interviewed about the Vatican’s speechwriting system, but another official in the Secretariat of State said Benedict has kept the job to himself.
The 78-year-old Benedict writes his own speeches, though that might change as the papal workload grows, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his position.
That Benedict is a man of his own words seemed clear from his first speech as pontiff, a long discourse in Latin, delivered to cardinals on April 20 in the Sistine Chapel where he had been elected less than 24 hours before.
“I’d hate to put it this way, but there would be very few people capable of writing that speech in Latin, just on that criterion alone,” said Pham.
The speechwriting flair of the former Cardinal Ratzinger started drawing the general public’s attention a few weeks before he was elected pope.
At John Paul’s request, he composed the brief meditations and prayers that were read aloud at the Good Friday Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum on March 25.
Ratzinger, a theologian more accustomed to lecturing to doctoral students than preaching to pilgrims, came up with several sound bites in a vivid, plain talk.
The words of one of the prayers he penned floated on a sea of metaphors drawn from everyday life: “Lord, your church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side. In your field we see more weeds than wheat. The soiled garments and face of your church throw us into confusion.”
In one meditation, Ratzinger, who had served since 1981 as the Vatican’s guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy, denounced “filth” in the Church, including in the priesthood, in an apparent reference to the sex abuse scandals that shook faithful around the world.
Ratzinger, in his years in Germany as a theology professor, was renowned for his writings. But one of his former students, the Rev. Vincent Twomey, observed that many were lectures that had been recorded and then transcribed.
A professor of moral theology at the Pontifical University, St. Patrick’s College, in Maynooth, Ireland, Twomey said that a Ratzinger lecture stood out for “its clarity, its logical progression and the quality of its expression.”
“When he speaks, the Germans have a word for it - ‘Druckreif’ - it’s ready for publication,” he said. . . .
Full article