A Papal Benediction

The 265th Pope's decision to give up earthly power offers the world an unusual--and needed--spiritual lesson

By Jon Meacham Monday, Feb. 25, 2013
    • Donatella Giagnori / Eidon Press / ZUMA Press

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    And yet his legacy is not simply one of retrenchment. Quietly and subtly, Benedict has carried forward the more charismatic work of John Paul II to encourage a Catholic culture of evangelism. When he came to power, Benedict was expected in some quarters to preside over a kind of catacomb church, creating a smaller, purer version of Catholicism. Instead: the 265th Pope is leaving in part because he knows that this is an hour to look outward, not inward. "Now the door is opening to a missionary church, and Benedict had the humility not to stand on ceremony or inertia but to recognize that he does not have the strength or energy left to lead us through that door," says George Weigel, a biographer of Pope John Paul II who has just published a new book, Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church.

    The departing Pope's evangelism is partly a response to the historical reality that the church, once the center of culture, is in many places now at its periphery. To address this 21st century problem, he has drawn on the 1st century: the Gospel commandment to proclaim the Christian message, as Benedict has said, "to those regions awaiting the first evangelization and to those regions where the roots of Christianity are deep but who have experienced a serious crisis of faith due to secularization." Unfashionable, perhaps, but Benedict has never worried about fashion (save for his red Prada shoes). As he withdraws from the thick of the world's fight, Benedict has left his successors many tasks and, if they choose to follow it, a course that is, in the words of Benedict favorite St. Augustine, "ever ancient, ever new."

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