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Kenneth Sadler, Aberdeen diocese rep for Justice & Peace Scotland reflects on the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI.

On Saturday 31 December 2022, at the age of ninety-five and following a short illness, the Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI passed away in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, his Vatican residence. Benedict’s death marked the end of an era for the Church and it was the catalyst for much media commentary on his eventful life and, especially, his time as pope.

Scottish Catholics remembered with affection the heady days in September 2010 when the German pope visited the UK and spent a day in Scotland, where he met Queen Elizabeth II at the Palace of Holyrood House and celebrated Mass with around 70,000 Catholics in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, before flying to London. While there was essentially universal acknowledgement of Benedict’s personal holiness and commitment to Christ, his brilliant theological mind, and deep love of the Church, some pointed to perceived missteps as pontiff which surely contributed to his courageous and radical decision to resign from the papacy in February 2013, rather than attempt to bear its burdens as his physical and mental strength declined due to old age.

The terms ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’, taken from secular politics, can be an awkward fit when applied to the positions held by people within the Catholic Church; they may be useful up to a point, yet only as a crude shorthand that overlooks shared Christian commitment and often fails to give an accurate picture of the believer’s approach. Nevertheless, thanks in part to his reaction against certain experimental excesses that affected the Church in the wake of Vatican II and, of course, his long service under Pope John Paul II as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (1981 to 2005), Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was seen as a conservative choice to succeed the Polish pontiff. Indeed, given the closeness of their relationship, he was very much the continuity candidate, even if he lacked the powerful charisma of his predecessor.

Yet after becoming pope in April 2005 and taking the name Benedict, a tribute to Pope Benedict XV and St Benedict of Nursia, the inadequacy of describing the new pontiff as simply a conservative Catholic became clear. Yes, Benedict adhered completely to the truths of the faith, and he knew that Christ himself was the answer to the often confused and corrupted yearnings of modern humanity – to the whole human question. However, his manner was kind and humble. Benedict’s certainty and the confidence it instilled did not prevent him from engaging with the world as it is or from fostering fruitful dialogue with other Christian communities, other religions, and even unbelievers.

The first encyclical of Benedict’s pontificate, Deus Caritas Est: on Christian Love (2005), came as a surprise to those expecting a moralising letter denouncing the faults and failings of the present age. Instead, Benedict, the faithful and gentle teacher, offered the world a deep and profound treatment of the essence of Christian love and he reflected on what is distinctive in the Church’s practice of charity.

On a personal note, I remain immensely grateful for Benedict’s second encyclical, Spe Salvi: on Christian Hope (2007), with its penetrating reflections on faith, freedom, progress, and the nature of authentic Christian hope. It is also clear to me that that author of Spe Salvi and its compassionate, realistic, and wise passages on death, judgement and eternal life was as well-prepared as any human being could be for the inevitable end of his mortal life.

Those of us who identify as social justice-orientated Catholics can recognise the contribution to Catholic Social Teaching made by Benedict in his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate: on Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth (2009). We can also recognise the use Pope Francis makes of Benedict’s writings in the environmental encyclical Laudato Si’: on Care for our Common Home (2015). Laudato Si’ is a cornerstone of the Argentinian pope’s pontificate and represents a major development of Church teaching, but it is a development that Benedict, the first ‘green pope’, helped pave the way for.

Benedict faced tremendous challenges and difficulties during his life and, in the glare of the world’s media spotlight, as successor to the beloved Pope John Paul the Great. If some commentators speak of errors or misjudgements made by Benedict after he became the Bishop of Rome, we remember the insight of Pope Francis in Gaudete et Exsultate: on the Call to Holiness in Today’s World (2018):

Not everything a saint says is completely faithful to the Gospel; not everything he or she does is authentic or perfect. What we need to contemplate is the totality of their life, their entire journey of growth in holiness, the reflection of Jesus Christ that emerges when we grasp their overall meaning as a person. (GE 22)

Whether Benedict is ever formally canonised or not, when we look on ‘the totality of [his] life’, we surely discern the reflection of his beloved Lord, Jesus Christ, in whose vineyard Joseph Ratzinger laboured so diligently as a ‘humble worker’.

May Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI rest in peace.

Kenneth Sadler
Coordinator, St Mary’s Cathedral Justice and Peace Group
Feast of St John Ogilvie
10 March 2023

Alex Holmes has once again, recently returned from Calais where he supports destitute asylum seekers.   In his latest blog 'Fire' Alex describes life in the BMX camp in freezing conditions.  

‘BMX’, the Eritrean camp, Calais. Minus 6 degrees. The mud is a frozen cross hatch of foot prints; humans, birds, rats. Fireside, the flames offer some comfort from the bitter cold. Saare places small cartons of milk in the orange embers and, once heated, they’re passed around the fireside circle. A charred-black kettle balances precariously on the burning timbers; soon there'll be sweet, warming tea. Nights; plastic jerry cans filled with hot water, two sleeping bags apiece plus blankets make the long freezing hours bearable.

Fire. Over the space of twenty-four hours the temperature has risen by 15 degrees and with the change comes relentless rain. The logs are sodden. Paper handkerchiefs, plastic bags, cooking oil; all are needed to combust the wet wood. At last the wood catches but to keep it burning requires the regular addition of plastic. Acrid black smoke swirls downwind. Saare pokes the melting jerry can, draws his poker upwards and creates a string of plastic spaghetti which he loops into the shape of a heart. Upwind a pallet is wedged against two chairs, a buffer against the strong wind. Aaron takes a burning timber from the fire and holds it close to his wet shoes in an attempt to dry them. Teodros places two tins of lentils beside the fire, takes off his shoes and socks and delicately resting a heel on each tin, he warms his feet

Fire. La Gymnase Gauguin Matisse is just minutes from BMX. The five fire-coloured dancers in Matisse’s 1910 painting ‘La Danse’ are a glorious evocation of life, of energy, of communion. It’s a painting that captures the essence of fireside life in the Eritrean camp. As the bitter wind chills, there’s chicken in a pan on the fire. ‘Tell me when ten minutes have passed, Mr Chef says it needs ten more minutes’. Music is playing on someone’s phone, Eritrean singer Bereket Mesele. Abel gets to his feet and begins an animated dance, his arms raised high in the air. A new energy pulsates around the fireside.

Fire. Gauguin arrived in Tahiti in 1891 to experience Tahitian tribal art and pagan religion only to discover that the French colonisers had suppressed the native traditions that fascinated hm. So he set out to recreate in his painting what had been destroyed. Upa Upa was his first attempt "to recover a trace of this so distant, so mysterious past; to rediscover the ancient hearth, to revive the fire amidst all these ashes." Having no knowledge of it, he expressed it through flames and dancing.

Fire. A brilliance of enlivening energy. But fire burns. Mikaele carries a flaming plastic jerry can from one fire to start another. His fingers are a patchwork of burnt flesh. Filimon’s fire-burnt wrist is marked by a swathe of pink scar tissue. Fire too is metaphor. Fire is the colonial trope that Gauguin encountered 130 years ago; the colonial trope is to control, to negate, to dehumanise. Today it is mirrored in the dehumanising refugee projects of so many former colonial powers. The UK government’s proposal to offshore asylum seekers, to foist its responsibilities under international law onto a third world country, Rwanda, is steeped in this mentality. Rwanda: the ‘R’ word. It seers into the psyche of those around the fire who dream still of reaching the UK. It is the flame that harms, that burns, the very antithesis of the warming, welcoming hearth.

Fire. ‘It’s now ten years since I was at home in my village in Eritrea’, says Girma. ‘We always had a fire outside our house. It was beautiful. On one side there were sheep, on the other, cows, and children playing everywhere. We drank coffee and chatted around the fire’. Dark is falling fast; the flames light up Girma’s face which breaks into a smile. ‘Calais life is hard but I am always happy. I am happy because God is my power.’ He pauses, his smile widening. ‘God is my fire!’ His eyes sparkle.

Alex Holmes updates his fireside tales series from Calais with this new blog - Dead Wire, Live Wire - depicting the hardship and hope he encounters as he accompanies those seeking sanctuary.  

Eject - Expel – Clear – Remove – Oust – Boot Out. It all comes to the same thing: Rejection – ‘We do not want you here in Calais’. It is the norm; systematic. Expulsion from one of Calais’ refugee camps can be temporary, an every-two-day event to undermine, to unsettle, or it can be permanent, an expulsion followed soon after by the erection of high metal fencing and razor wire. Dead wire.

‘Green Hotel’, ‘Binto’, ‘Rue des Muettes’, Eritrean camps that have become lifeless zones, the human communities that brought vitality to these places cleared away. Less than a hundred metres from the fenced-off ‘Binto’, the bridge under which many Eritreans used to sleep,  caught in the cross-glare of the football stadium lights and those along the ‘security wall’, the Stadium camp, for three years, the heartbeat of the Eritrean exiled community in Calais. Now it is empty; even the rats have gone. The residual paraphernalia of daily human life is scattered and aging. Black wood ash and rusting nails mark the site of the daily fire. On the makeshift shelf strapped to the fence sits a solitary blue mug and a near-empty jar of Maxwell House instant coffee. A silver shard from a broken looking glass lies on the frame of a metal ironing board; alongside it, the chrome lines of a coffee table mirror the rigid geometry of the nearby concrete ‘security wall’. Soon, perhaps, the Stadium camp will be sealed off by fencing and wire. Dead wire. What the authorities kill off by their expulsions is life, humanity at its very best. Stripped back to essentials what emerges amongst the exiled communities pushed to the periphery of Calais is endless tenacity and courage, the warmest embrace of hospitality, a continual outflowing of love. 

BMX camp. Live Wire. Wire strewn with drying clothes and blankets. Wire adorned with crosses and small statues and paintings of the Eritrean flag. Two sets of rosary beads click against the fence and swing in ever wider arcs with the rising wind; rain is coming. In preparation, the guys have erected a framework of pallets and strapped a tarpaulin to the framework and the wire. Beneath the tarpaulin, a homely domestic scene. Negisti is cooking injera on the fire, the large frying pan sitting on four tin cans. Russom is fingering his newly acquired recorder; gingerly putting it to his mouth he begins to play a tune. Keren is straightening a cigarette paper; with the few remaining flakes in his tobacco tin he rolls a nail-thin cigarette. Negisti’s two year old, Bisrat, pockets filled with peanuts, moves from person to person around the fire to gift or to deny them a single nut. Heavy drops of rain begin to fall on the tarpaulin, a percussive addition to Russom on the recorder and the voice of Eritrean singer Semhar Yohannes coming from Meron’s phone. The guys grab a second tarpaulin to reinforce the first one and create a foil to the rain driving in horizontally. A second fire has been lit and onions sizzle in a big pan over the flames. Now the staccato drumming of the rain drowns out all other sounds. The tarpaulin balloons inwards with the weight of rainwater and has to be repeatedly pushed upwards to drain the water away. Other guys rush in to shelter. Sodden shoes and socks circle both fires in an attempt to get them dry. Hands and feet compete with the food for heat. 

The downpour eases as dramatically as it began. Peering out from the tarpaulin into the evening light, Negus delights in a murmuration of starlings, a shape-shifting cloud that swoops and swirls above the willows. Russom is now DJ. His choice of music, ‘More than I Can Say’ by Leo Sayer. He first accompanies the song with his recorder, then in a second run, he sings along, word perfect, “I miss you every single day, why must my life be filled with sorrow, I love you more than I can say”. There is appreciation and banter; dinner is minutes away.