Ask any Catholic our age who their favourite pope (who lived in their lifetime) is and 9 out of 10 will say Pope John Paul II. Saint John Paul II was indeed one of the greatest popes to have ever lived. His long and productive reign was unparalleled in modern times. However, I am the one out of the 10 people who will say that my favourite pope is Pope Benedict. With his passing today, please allow me to share some of my thoughts and memories of my favourite pope.
Perhaps what shaped my opinion of Benedict was my meeting of him shortly after Renee and I got married. Our honeymoon was planned somewhat around meeting him at the Wednesday papal audience. We got married on August 5, 2006 and flew to Rome the day after. The day before the audience, we toured Rome for some time and went to the church office to pick up the audience tickets. A sister met us there and told us that for that summer, no tickets would be required and we just need to show up the next morning. Having done some research prior, we knew we needed to get there early for the late morning audience in order to get front row seats.
The next morning, on August 9, we woke up before 6 am and took a cab to St. Peter's Square, dressed in formal attire to line up to get into the Paul VI Audience Hall. We were met by a line of old Italian ladies who had gotten there before we did, but we were the first newlyweds there to queue up. If I recall correctly, the audience was scheduled to start at 10 am. I didn't want to leave things to chance so we got there 4 hours early! After standing outside for a couple of hours, the Vatican staff started to let people in. By then, the line had grown substantially. After passing a security checkpoint, we noticed the old Italian ladies started running for the audience hall. Not to miss out on the action, we started running as well and we successfully outpaced the 70 year old ladies beside us! As we turned a corner, a staff saw us and waved us towards him. Although he didn't speak English, we understood that he was trying to tell us that we could enter the hall through a special door. We entered that door and was shown to the front row of the audience, while the old Italian ladies had to fight for the sections farther back. We guessed correctly that the front row was reserved for newlyweds.
The audience started on time and we were very excited to see the pope walk into the audience. To be very honest, I don't remember much about the audience itself. Perhaps it was because it was not in English (that part I can't even recall with certainty). In any case, the audience ended and with our good fortune, the pope decided to walk to the front row to meet the newlyweds, which was not always the case.
When he got to us, we held his hands and spoke the words that we had rehearsed earlier, "Your Holiness, we are Chinese Catholics from Canada...", to which he responded, "That's very nice!" To this day, I enjoy telling others that the words we received from the pope was, "that's very nice". We concluded with a request for him to pray for the Church in China. And thus, our brief encounter with Pope Benedict concluded.
There were a couple of things that I experienced that day. It was that Pope Benedict's humility was very palpable. The way he carried himself, his expression and his sincerity in speech all contributed to it. If he weren't dressed in his papal attire, you could not tell that he was the head of the Catholic Church. It was not required of him to come greet the faithful after the audience, but he did so nonetheless.
Secondly, I felt that he was a very gentle person, as he greeted us with a genuine smile. Over the years, there have been articles written about the pope and former Cardinal Ratzinger that he cracked down on dissent in the Church, even to the point that his nickname was "God's Rottweiler". I could not reconcile that assessment with the pope whom I met on that August day in 2006. Pope Benedict was uncompromising with Catholic doctrine not because he was a tough traditionalist, but because he loved the Church and did not want it to go astray. When he ascended to the papacy, he confused a lot of people with the selection of "Benedict" as his papal name. If "God's Rottweiler" was his true persona, would he not have chosen a name like "Michael" or "George", who were God's soldiers, ready to do battle? Yet, he chose "Benedict" in honour of St. Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism.
This was the Pope Benedict that I met: humble and gentle. He was not the "best" pope who ever reigned, but he has a special place in my heart. In the bible, it was not often that Christ described himself, but one passage stands out right now: "Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).
And so, Pope Benedict, we bid you farewell as Our Lord welcomes his humble and gentle servant back home! We shall meet again someday!
Renee and Felix. Beautiful, may God always bless you and your Children.
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