Andreas Solaro/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Pope Benedict XVI waves to the crowd in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican during his weekly Sunday Angelus prayer. Click photo for larger image.

By Ann Rodgers
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

VATICAN CITY -- Two months into the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, crowds are pouring into St. Peter's Square in near record numbers to see and hear him.

"The pope is here!" a man shouted in Italian Wednesday morning. Cheers rose from 35,000 as Benedict appeared, standing in a white Jeep-like popemobile. It circled the square, moving slowly as the 78-year-old pope, whose mane of white hair matched his vestments, waved to the faithful.

Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh, who attended a recent audience, was astonished to see the aged pope reach down from the moving vehicle to touch pilgrims' hands and pat the heads of children. He had always admired the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, but knew him to be reserved and self-effacing.

"The early signs are that he is committed to being the best pastoral pope he can be," Wuerl said. As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger focused on his assigned duty to guard against error. As pope he knows he is called to do far more, Wuerl said.

"The way in which he has taken this on, it's almost a change in personality, but it's not. He is adapting his style to the exigencies of the office," Wuerl said. "What we are seeing is a warmth, a conscious effort to reach out."

His crowds are far larger than those of Pope John Paul II at the same time last year. Sunday addresses from his apartment window have drawn up to 100,000 people. And so far, to the surprise of many, the new pope's words and deeds have drawn sharper criticism from the Catholic far right than from the left.

John Allen, Vatican analyst of the liberal National Catholic Reporter, analyzed nearly 45,000 words that Benedict spoke in his first 45 days. They proved mostly positive, not the attacks on secularism and heresy many expected from Ratzinger, Allen said.

"There is an obvious sense of alarm from the right that this pontificate will not deliver the strong conservative agenda that that wing of the church was expecting," said Allen, who just completed his second biography of Ratzinger/Benedict.

On the left, Allen said: "They are holding their breath. A few say they are pleasantly surprised by what they have seen so far, but most are still living in a state of alarm that the crackdown they fear may still be coming."

Most Catholics, Allen noted, don't belong to either camp, have only good will toward Benedict and seem pleased with what they have seen of him.

Youth looking for truth

Commitment to Christian unity and to good relations with non-Christian faiths has been among his strongest themes. On May 8 Benedict, the first pope from a heavily Protestant nation, became the first pope to send greetings and prayers to the national synod of the Reformed Church of France.

Christian unity was a major theme in his first trip outside Rome, to a Eucharistic festival in Bari, Italy, where 200,000 gathered to see him in late May. Bari is a sacred site for Orthodox Christians because the bones of St. Nicholas are there. Benedict again called for Christian unity -- and failed to denounce liturgical abuses, which conservatives had hoped he would.

"Precisely here in Bari ... land of meeting and dialogue with Christian brothers of the East, I would like to confirm my wish to assume as a fundamental commitment to work with all my energies on the reconstitution of the full and visible unity of all the followers of Christ," he said.

There are signs that the Orthodox may respond more readily to Benedict than they did to John Paul, who had longed to visit Russia. "There is a more positive and open tone now from some of them. I fully expect Benedict to go to Moscow," Allen said.

John Paul remains a difficult act to follow. Many Italians still call him "the Holy Father" and Benedict "the successor to the Holy Father," said the Rev. Richard Martin Mackowski, emeritus professor of biblical studies at the Pontifical Oriental Institute. It is not a slight toward Benedict, but a sign of love for the man Mackowski calls John Paul the Great.

Like John Paul, Benedict is popular with the young, Mackowski said. They like him for the same reasons that some of their elders resented Ratzinger.

"The youngsters are looking for truth and for someone who stands for the truth, someone who isn't going to obfuscate any issues. He's going to tell them just the way it is," Mackowski said.

Right to health care

Two events in his fledgling pontificate created outcries in the United States -- though it does not appear that Benedict was directly involved in either as pope.

The first was the May 6 resignation of the Rev. Thomas Reese as editor of the Jesuit magazine America. Reese, a theological centrist, was a trusted guide for American journalists who cover the Catholic church. They were outraged to learn that Ratzinger's office had complained about Reese's magazine since 2000 because it sometimes ran articles critical of church actions or positions.

Reese responded to the complaints, even publishing articles by Ratzinger himself. But, according to Jesuit officials, criticism from Ratzinger's office continued until two weeks before John Paul's death.

Reese is said to have resigned voluntarily, to spare his order trouble. He was, according to an informed source, "the last casualty of Ratzinger rather than the first casualty of Benedict XVI."

The second outcry involved a report May 20 that the Vatican is not investigating the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the elderly Mexican founder of the Legionaries of Christ, regarding long-standing complaints by several of his former priests that he molested them as minors.

The priest and the Legionaries -- who maintain his innocence -- were favorites of John Paul. Around the time of John Paul's death, Ratzinger's office sent an investigator to North America to interview witnesses in the long-dormant case. When that became public, the Legionaries announced that "the Holy See" had told them, "There is no canonical process under way regarding our founder ... nor will one be initiated."

But that notice came not from Ratzinger's former office, but the office of Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a supporter of Maciel. And the original Italian did not say that no case would be initiated, but that no case was "foreseen." That, according to Allen, leaves the matter unresolved.

It is unclear what Ratzinger's former congregation has decided to do about the priest, he wrote.

That congregation is now in the hands of longtime San Francisco Archbishop William Levada, who worked for Ratzinger in the 1980s. Though Levada is doctrinally conservative, Benedict's selection of him drew more ire from the Catholic right than the left.

Levada was known for finding pastoral ways to resolve conflicts in his culturally challenging diocese. When San Francisco pushed for businesses to provide benefits to domestic partners in gay relationships, Levada did not treat it as an issue of sexual ethics but of the right to health care, lobbying for a further extension of benefits to anyone in the household.

Benedict took his first step into Italian politics regarding yesterday's referendum that proposes lifting restrictions on in vitro fertilization, which the church opposes both because it is "unnatural" and because embryos are often destroyed in the process. The Italian bishops urged people not to vote, because a low turnout means the referendum fails. As polls closed late Sunday, just over 13 percent of eligible voters had cast ballots, according to the Interior Ministry. Voting was to resume this morning.

The pope affirmed the bishops' efforts two weeks ago.

"Here we're not working for Catholic interests, but always for the human person as a creature of God," he told the bishops.

To meet Jewish leaders

Many liberal Catholics feared Benedict would have little interest in social justice issues. But his Sunday addresses have shown wide-ranging concern.

Last week he asked the faithful to pray for Bolivia, which is torn by demonstrations over control of the oil in industry. He appealed for the release of a young Italian aid worker, Clementina Cantoni, kidnapped last month in Afghanistan. She was released Friday.

And he asked prayers for migrants, "that they will always meet receptive friends and hearts on their path, who are capable of supporting them in the difficulties of everyday life." Benedict has dedicated this month to prayers for society to aid refugees.

Benedict's first "foreign" trip, to Germany in August for World Youth Day, appears to have raised the ecumenical bar. Of 248 churches to host teaching sessions by Catholic bishops, seven are Protestant and one Orthodox. Its official "spiritual centers" will be co-hosted by the Taize Ecumenical Commmunity, founded by a Protestant to work for Christian unity.

During World Youth Day, Benedict plans to visit Cologne's synagogue -- an important gesture from a German pope to the German Jewish remnant who survived the Holocaust. But it caused consternation among some ultraconservative Catholics who expected Benedict to pull back from what they regarded as John Paul's folly of holding religious gatherings with non-Christians.

"When he announced he was going to the synagogue in Germany, I got word from some of the traditionalists that they were upset," said Scott Hahn, a theology professor at Franciscan University, of Steubenville, Ohio, who wrote introductions to the English editions of two of Ratzinger's books.

"But it seems to me that he is continuing to be not so much John Paul, but St. Paul who went to the synagogue wherever he was, and they would welcome him."

On Thursday, Benedict met with international Jewish leaders. He stressed the Jewish foundation of Christianity and pledged to continue working for better relations, which he said must include, "a continued reflection on the profound historical, moral and theological questions presented by the experience of the Shoah."

World Youth Day will be the first global test of whether young Catholics will give him the same rock star reception they gave John Paul -- who thrived in that atmosphere. But Benedict is a classical pianist who once called rock music "a vehicle of anti-religion."

Wuerl believes Benedict will do brilliantly. He recalled another papal youth event where the warm-up sounded like Christian death metal.

"It was deafening. But you didn't have to like that music to love those kids. I suspect that if Pope Benedict XVI arrives at an arena and those kids are screaming and shouting and cheering, he will be delighted," Wuerl said.

On Wednesday, Diana Garguilo, a Duquesne University law student from Johnstown, was thrilled to see Benedict wave from the popemobile.

"I never thought I would see him that close up," she said. "The crowd is unbelievable. Very energetic -- and very pushy."

Benedict gave a meditation on Psalm 111, then a recap and greetings in 11 languages.

"The Psalm invites us at the end to discover all the good things the Lord gives us every day. We see more easily the negative aspects of our life. The Psalm invites us to see the positive also, the many gifts we receive, and so find gratitude, as only a grateful heart can celebrate worthily the liturgy of thanksgiving, the Eucharist," Benedict said.

Sarah Boone, a law student from Tulane University attending Duquesne's summer law program in Rome, was impressed.

"His focus was on a person's feelings about their relationship with God and the church," said Boone, who is not Catholic. "I've never heard a papal address before. I expected it to be more doctrinal, but it was more personal."