By Colin Gore

When Pope Benedict was elected, the pundits said that he was going to be a “transitionPope”, given his advanced age (he had turned 78 three days before). Seven years later, he is still trucking along, and he shows no signs of slowing down.

This meansthat he has had nearly seven years now to develop the leitmotivs of his Papacy,which we can summarize by looking at the themes he has spoken about. This alsomeans that this blog has a lot of ground to cover if we are going to get caughtup to the present day

John Paul II popularized these audiences while developing the topics the Church needed inthat time, particularly the Theology of the Body, which he explained everyWednesday for over five years. Looking back on Pope Benedict’s last sevenyears, which are the themes that have guided his reflection for the Church, andwhat is his contribution to the teaching of the Church?

It’s clearthat Pope Benedict XVI picked up where his predecessor left off – both in thesize of the crowds attending and in his topics. The last theme John Paul II wasa running commentary on the Liturgy of the Hours: the Psalms and Canticles usedin Vespers. Pope Benedict delivered the last 35 audiences on the topic, concluding it ten months into his Papacy, on Feb. 15, 2006.

A monthlater, after a few audiences dedicated to the topic of the Church, he began hisfirst original cycle of audiences, on the Apostles and first disciples. Overthe next eleven months, he gave a “spiritual mini-biography” of all those whomade a real firsthand experience of Christ, transmitted this knowledge to the first Christian communities and began the first work of evangelization.

Over thenext four years, he dedicated most of the audiences to the theme of the livesof the saints. Each saint has a particular lesson for our Christian life, andthey show us that normal people of all times and walks of life can becomesaints – and that means you and me as well!

Eighty-three of the 108 audiences on thelives of the saints dealt with the Church Fathers, both of antiquity and of theMiddle Ages, who had a decisive role in how the Church developed historicallyand doctrinally until the present day; by studying the lives of these keysaints, we understand the Church as it is today in a deeper way.

He alsodedicated 16 audiences, between September 1st, 2010 and January 26th,2011, to the topic of “Women of the Middle Ages”, refuting the view that theChurch does not give women the credit and importance that they deserve.

The HolyFather also took two important “breaks” in his development of the lives of thesaints: one during the Year of St. Paul (20 audiences from July 2008 toFebruary 2009), and another during the Year for Priests (eleven audiences from June 2009 to June 2010).

During the Year of St. Paul he stressed Paul’sexperience of Christ, theological insights and zeal in the effort ofevangelization, and throughout the Year for Priests he underlined theimportance of meaning of the priesthood, helping the faithful appreciate theirpriests and restoring the fervor of priests themselves and their public image,under attack in these very difficult years.

We can also expect severalaudiences dedicated to the topic of faith during the upcoming Year of Faith: Oct. 11, 2012, to Nov. 24, 2013.

Beginning on May 4th, 2011, the Holy Father began a series of catecheses onChristian prayer, which he is still developing nearly every Wednesday. He hasconsidered prayer from various angles – prayer in the life of every Christian,methods of prayer, the different types of prayer, prayer in the Scriptures(above all the Psalms), and the prayer of Jesus.

The Holy Father clearly seesthe importance of prayer, and in addition to living his own prayer lifefervently, he wants to invite the universal Church to do the same, knowing thatthe Church will be as strong as the prayer life of each of its members.

This listgives us an insight into what is in the heart of our Pope: “From the abundanceof the heart the mouth speaks.” All of what he says goes back to the samethemes: the need to make a personal experience of Christ’s love and to grow inholiness by contemplating this love in prayer and living a strong sacramentallife, which will bring us to transmit Christ to the others, following theexample of saints past and present.

Despite differences over women’s ordination and a controversial Vatican initiative to woo back disgruntled Anglicans, Pope Benedict XVI and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will pray together in Rome on Saturday (March 10).

The heads of the Roman Catholic Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion will celebrate vespers to mark the 1,000th anniversary of the Camaldoli monastery in Italy, which is revered by both Catholics and Anglicans.

Benedict and Williams are scheduled to have a private meeting on Saturday morning.

The Catholic Church has strongly criticized the decision to ordain women priests by the Church of England, which is also considering ordaining women bishops.

Before he was elected pope in 2005, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a personal letter of support to U.S. conservatives who later left the Episcopal Church over the ordination of an openly gay bishop.

Relations between the two churches were further strained after the Vatican announced a special structure, called an ‘ordinariate,’ to allow conservative Anglicans to convert to Catholicism while retaining bits of their Anglican tradition. Two ordinariates have already been created in the U.S. and in Britain.

Even as official relations remain tense, the two men enjoy a strong personal relationship and have met often in the past, most recently in Assisi last October during the World Day of Prayer for Peace.

The renowned Anglican choir of London’s Westminster Abbey is scheduled to perform during a papal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in June.

Brotherly love is not uncommon, but the more than 80-year-old bond between Monsignor Georg Ratzinger and his brother Joseph, Pope Benedict XVI, is of one of the rarest and most fascinating fraternal relationships ever written about.

In My Brother the Pope, which hit shelves March 1,  Msgr. Ratzinger provided German writer Michael Hesemann with the only living witness to the early days and formation of brothers who were ordained as Catholic priests together on the same day in 1951, after surviving Nazi Germany and World War II.

Msgr. Ratzinger and Pope Benedict XVI, or Georg and Joseph,  in their early days mere sons of an ordinary hard-working policeman and faithful Catholic who married a devout woman he met through taking out a print advertisement, are seen as never before.

“Msgr. Ratzinger draws the picture of a family that grew so strong through the practice of its deep faith that it could withstand all the storms of that time, even those of the godless Nazi regime,” Hesemann writes in the book’s introduction.

Noted author and Papal biographer George Weigel calls My Brother the Pope “an evocative portrait that sheds new light on the experiences that shaped some of the thinking of Pope Benedict XVI.”

Hesemann, whose idea it was to acquire Monsignor Ratzinger’s detailed memoirs about his brother and their unique bond, says of My Brother the Pope, “The Ratzinger family secret is now available to the entire world.”

Msgr. Ratzinger tells Hesemann of the brothers’ early lives, when they were forced to become part of the Hitler Youth and drafted into the army of the Third Reich. My Brother the Pope also provides an intimate look into the Ratzinger family, and the tight knit and devotional Catholic home life that produced not one – but two vocations to priesthood.

“Often on Sundays we attended Mass twice, once as servers and another time with our family, for instance, the early Mass at 6:00 and the main parish Mass at 8:00 or 8:30,” Msgr. Ratzinger told Hesemann.

“Then, in the afternoon at 2 p.m., there were devotions, on feast days a Vespers service. This piety, which was lived and put into practice, defined our whole life, even though today I celebrate only one Mass and refrain from going to a second one. Nevertheless, it was imparted to us as children in the cradle, so to speak, and we remained faithful to it throughout our lives. I am convinced that the lack of this traditional piety in many families is also a reason why there are too few priestly vocations today.”

In My Brother the Pope, Monsignor Ratzinger not only shares – for the first time – a unique depiction of his brother with stories never heard before, but readers will encounter the man, the best friend, who continues to serve as a confidante and guide to the Holy Father to this day in the midst of his Papacy.

“From the beginning of my life,” Pope Benedict said, “my brother has always been for me not only a companion, but a trustworthy guide. For me he has been a point of orientation and of reference with the clarity and determination of his decisions. He has always shown me the path to take, even in difficult situations.”

The Ratzinger brothers celebrated the 60th anniversary of their ordinations to the priesthood last year, and the book includes many pages of black and white and color photos that illustrate the lifelong, lasting friendship the Pope and his brother have enjoyed. They continue to vacation together, and talk to each other daily.

“Not just a fascinating book but a unique one, as well,” said Fr. Benedict Groeschel, of My Brother the Pope. “We are granted an intimate look at the life of one beloved brother through the eyes of another.”

It isn’t anywhere on the official agenda, but as Roman Catholic leaders meet in Rome this weekend, looming in the background will be a recent string of Vatican leaks that reveal a bitter power struggle among the hierarchy.

In recent weeks, several confidential memos and documents by senior Vatican officials have appeared in the Italian media. The leak is “unprecedented in recent history,” says Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.

The scandal started in late January when an Italian television program showed letters written to Pope Benedict XVI by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican’s U.S. ambassador, asserting widespread corruption and waste in the Vatican procurement process. Vigano, who at the time was secretary general of the office that oversees Vatican City, begged Benedict not to send him to the United States. His removal would cause “disarray and discouragement” in those who shared his anti-corruption struggle, Vigano said.

Later, an Italian newspaper published a series of documents relating to the Vatican bank. The documents showed that a recent push by the Vatican to bring its financial laws in line with international standards had met with internal resistance.

For decades, the Vatican bank has been accused of shady dealings, and its management is currently under investigation by the Italian judiciary for alleged money laundering.

Under Benedict, the Vatican has started internal reforms aimed at including the Holy See in a European list of financially transparent countries.

In one of the leaked documents, Cardinal Attilio Nicora, who heads the newly established Vatican financial watchdog, worried that proposed amendments to the laws could be seen as a “step back” from reform.

The Vatican leak that has garnered most international attention involved an alleged conspiracy to kill Benedict “within 12 months.” An Italian newspaper published a confidential letter to the pope, describing how an Italian cardinal had spoken about the plot during a visit to China.

The Vatican chief spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, dismissed the claim as “nonsense” but confirmed that the document, as well as others leaked recently, was authentic.

The Vatican has tried to present the leaks as an effort to stymie Benedict’s drive to reform the church. “If someone thinks they can discourage the pope and his collaborators,” Lombardi said on Vatican Radio on Tuesday  (Feb. 14), “they’re deluding themselves.”

The next day, the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, wrote that Benedict pursues his “innovation and purification” of the church despite “the knowledge that the enemy comes in the night to sow weeds.”

But this interpretation isn’t shared by all Vatican observers. Andrea Tornielli, Vatican analyst at the Italian daily La Stampa, says that the string of document leaks are the consequence of a power struggle inside the Vatican. The real target of the document leaks, says Tornielli, is Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state.

According to Tornielli, recent reports are being used to “settle the scores” inside the Vatican.

For others, though, identifying the target of the leaks isn’t so easy. “It’s a tempest in a teapot,” says Rev. John Wauck, a professor of communications at the Santa Croce University in Rome.

“The documents’ contents are not earth-shattering,” Wauck said. “There is an Italian faction interested in evoking changes at the Secretariat of State,” but the leaks will not have any effect on future church developments, according to Wauck.

A prominent sex abuse lawyer has dropped a high-stakes lawsuit that sought to hold Pope Benedict XVI and other top church officials responsible for a clergy sexual abuse case.

The Vatican’s U.S. attorney, Jeffrey S. Lena, welcomed the decision to drop the suit on Friday (Feb. 10), saying the case was “held together by no more than a mendacious web of allegations of international conspiracy.”

The plaintiff’s attorney, Jeffrey Anderson, said the case was withdrawn as a consequence of progress in a separate court case involving the bankruptcy bid of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

The case involved the victims of the late Rev. Lawrence Murphy, a priest who was accused of molesting some 200 boys at the Milwaukee-area St. John’s School for the Deaf between 1950 and 1974.

Documents published by The New York Times in March 2010 showed that, in 1998, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — led by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI — refused to defrock Murphy despite requests from U.S. bishops involved in the case.

The Vatican’s top spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, explained at the time that the Vatican had taken into account Murphy’s old age and ill health.

Anderson had argued that the documents demonstrated that the Vatican’s leadership had direct responsibility in protecting abusive priests. His suit had named Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, and his predecessor, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, as co-defendants in the case with Benedict.

Lena said “the Holy See is not responsible for the supervision of the more than 400,000 priests around the world.” The Vatican declined to add further comment on the case, referring to Lena’s statement.

Catholic leaders on Thursday (Feb. 9) launched an online distance-learning center to help educate church leaders on the prevention of child sex abuse.

Unveiled on the final day of a “Towards Healing and Renewal” conference sponsored by the Vatican, the new online forum will provide training and certificate programs in four languages.

The center will cost 1.2 million euros ($1.92 million) for the first three years, partly funded by the U.S.-based Papal Foundation charity. The Rev. Hans Zollner, one of the conference organizers, stressed that all the foundation’s expenditures are expressly approved by Pope Benedict XVI.

The conference also highlighted the global scope of the child abuse crisis. Bishops from Asia, South America and Asia admitted that sexual abuse is not just a “Western problem,” even if the numbers of reported cases outside Europe and North America remain small.

The Rev. Edenio Valle of Brazil said bishops there had “no idea of what could or should be done.” Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila, Philippines, said Asia’s “culture of shame” may be responsible for victims’ silence.

Even in the U.S., “many victims of sexual assault never report” the violence, warned Michael Bemi and Patricia Neal, who helped craft the “Protecting God’s Children” program that’s used in 115 U.S. dioceses.

Though a church-sponsored independent study identified at least 15,000 abuse victims from 1950-2009, others estimate the total number could be as high as 100,000 as some victims remain silent.

The Vatican’s doctrinal chief on Monday (Feb. 6) told Catholic bishops from all over the world that they have a duty to “cooperate” with civil law on cases of clergy sexual abuse of minors.

Cardinal William J. Levada, a former archbishop of San Francisco who now heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with jurisdiction over abuse cases, stopped short, however, of requiring bishops to report abuse cases to prosecutors or police.

Speaking to a Vatican-sponsored conference on the church’s response to the scandal at Rome’s Gregorian University, Levada admitted that the church’s relations with civil authorities “may be different from one nation to another,” but stressed that this must not affect the basic principle of cooperation.

He also urged bishops to be “more proactive” in their response to the crisis, rather than wait for the scandal to erupt in the media.

Last May, the Vatican gave all bishops conferences around the world one year to draft voluntary “guidelines” on preventing abuse, caring for victims, disciplining abusive priests, and reporting suspected abuse to local police.

An estimated 4,000 cases of sexual abuse by clergy have been reported to Levada’s Vatican department during the last 10 years, he said.

Levada also highlighted the importance of listening to victims’ grievances, accompanying them “on the often long path of healing,” and encouraging them to follow the example of Pope Benedict XVI in meeting with victims.

In a message sent to the conference participants, Benedict wrote that victims healing must be of “paramount concern” for the church. The Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests dismissed the conference as “window dressing” that will not result in real reform.

Vatican officials are strongly refuting allegations made by the pope’s new ambassador to the United States that the Vatican City State is awash in corruption and waste.

A statement issued on Saturday (Feb. 4) by the current and past leaders of the Vatican’s Governorate, which oversees the management of Vatican City, has dismissed claims made by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano as “erroneous,” “unfounded” and “based on groundless fears.”

Vigano, who had been secretary general of the Governorate from 2009 until his appointment as papal nuncio to Washington last October, expressed his worries directly to Pope Benedict XVI in two letters unearthed by an Italian TV program in January.

Vigano told the pope that Vatican City’s management was “disastrous,” and asked Benedict to not transfer him to Washington. The move, he said, would cause “disarray and discouragement” among those who worked against “numerous situations of corruption and waste.”

The Vatican’s top spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, had initially threatened to sue the TV program that revealed the letters and dismissed its coverage as “biased.” Lombardi also reaffirmed the pope’s “unquestionable respect and trust” towards Vigano.

Saturday’s statement strikes a different chord, however, saying that Vigano’s assertions portray the Vatican’s Governorate as an “untrustworthy entity, controlled by dark forces.”

The statement was signed by Vigano’s former superior, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, and by Giovanni’s deputy, Bishop Giorgio Corbellini, and by the Governorate’s current president and secretary general.

Ten years after the clergy sexual abuse scandal erupted in the United States, Catholic bishops from all over the world will meet next week at a Vatican summit aimed at preventing abuse and protecting children.

The conference, “Towards Healing and Renewal,” will be held on Feb. 6-9 and is organized by the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome.

The Vatican’s top spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters on Friday (Feb. 3) that the summit enjoys the “full support and participation” of the Vatican’s highest offices, but Pope Benedict XVI is not expected to attend.

Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s chief abuse prosecutor, said the protection of children must become “a permanent principle and concern” in every decision of the church.

“There cannot be a distinction between the good of the church and the protection of youth,” he said Friday.

Last May, the Vatican gave all bishops conferences around the world one year to draft voluntary “guidelines” on preventing abuse, caring for victims, disciplining abusive priests, and reporting suspected abuse to local police.

Next week’s summit will bring together representatives from 110 bishops conferences, the heads of 30 religious orders and officials from most Vatican departments. Workshops will focus on a bishop’s responsibility to protect children and the psychological effects of abuse.

Bishop R. Daniel Conlon on Joliet, Ill., chairman of the Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is the official representative of the U.S. church.

The bishops and other delegates will hear the story of a sex abuse victim and participate in a “penitential vigil,” where representatives of seven groups who have been responsible of sex abuse or failed to prevent it will ask for forgiveness.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, will preside over the vigil while Cardinal William Levada, whose Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has jurisdiction over all abuse cases, will give the opening address.

Victims’ advocates have criticized the Vatican’s response to the scandal, accusing church officials of not disciplining bishops who failed to punish and report predator priests. Mary Collins, an Irish sex abuse victim, told journalists that she had been unsure whether to accept the Vatican’s invitation to address the conference, but had finally accepted in order to help protect as many children as possible.

“The church can become a leader in child protection,” she said, adding that she hoped Benedict would personally and publicly ask for forgiveness. “It would be the most wonderful thing for victims and for the church.”

Lombardi said Benedict would send the conference participants a message through his Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

Pope Benedict XVI praised new communications technologies like Twitter on Tuesday (Jan. 24), saying that even “concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible,” can convey “profound thoughts.”

Benedict did not explicitly refer to Twitter in his yearly message for World Communications Day, but Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, told reporters that “it’s safe to say that a reference to ‘tweets’ is there.”

Benedict wrote that in today’s world, “various types of websites, applications and social networks” can help people “find time for reflection and authentic questioning.”

A number of high-ranking churchmen already use Twitter. Cardinals Sean O’Malley of Boston; Odilo Scherer of Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, have thousands of followers. According to Celli, most of the visitors to the Vatican’s online news portal, www.news.va, arrive from social networks.

In his message, the pope also focused on the value of silence in communication, saying that without it, meaningful messages “cannot exist.”

“When messages and information are plentiful,” he wrote, silence becomes essential if we are to distinguish what is important from what is insignificant or secondary.”