Church in the World

Pope may spring surprises in his third year

Rome

As Pope Benedict XVI began the third year of his pontificate on Thursday, one of his closest aides predicted that "we are possibly in for surprises". Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna was in Rome last weekend for a series of celebrations - including the launch of the Pope's new book, Jesus of Nazareth, and a star-studded classical music concert - to mark the Bavarian pontiff's eightieth birthday. After the festivities the cardinal told an Austrian radio station that the Pope was "relaxed" and suggested that he could soon be taking some surprising initiatives.

On Sunday the Pope celebrated a large open-air Mass to mark his birthday and his second anniversary as Bishop of Rome.

"We are gathered here to reflect on the marking of a not-brief period of my existence," he told the some 45,000 people - many of them Germans - who gathered for the liturgy in St Peter's Square. The Pope gave thanks for his parents, siblings and friends, as well as the gift of his faith, in a homily that traced the spiritual highlights of his life. The Pope's brother, Mgr Georg Ratzinger, and a leading Orthodox bishop representing the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople were among those who attended the Mass.

On Monday, the actual birthday, Pope Benedict dined with 48 cardinals from all over the world before attending a special concert by the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Stuttgart, which played music by Mozart, Dvorák and Gabrieli. Sophia Loren was the most famous of the 6,000 invited guests, who also included political leaders from Italy and Bavaria. At end of the nearly two-hour-long concert the Pope thanked the musicians, saying that he was "convinced" that music was the "universal language of beauty, capable of uniting people of good will" throughout the world.

But the Pope's birthday celebrations actually began on 13 April in the Vatican with the unveiling of his 446-page book, Jesus of Nazareth. In the absence of the author, Cardinal Schönborn, Waldensian theologian Daniele Garrone and the Italian secular philosopher Massimo Cacciari presented the volume in the Vatican's Synod Hall to a gathering of cardinals and other "ecclesial and civic personalities". The Pope says his primary focus is on showing readers that they can trust that the Jesus presented in the gospels and taught by the Church's Magisterium is the true "historical" Jesus, despite doubts that even some Catholic biblical scholars have raised about those claims in the past several decades.

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