From the editor’s desk

This surprising Pope

Benedict XVI, who has just celebrated the third anniversary of his election as Pope, has surprised those who expected his papacy to be a seamless continuation of his role as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. There has been no witch-hunt of those who do not subscribe to a narrow conservative orthodoxy. Instead, his personal humility and conviction have endeared him to the millions who have seen him from afar and deeply touched those who have met him in person. In the United States, which he is currently visiting, they are fascinated, even enthralled. He has made few enemies and many friends.

He has issued two erudite and profound encyclicals, both personal and original, which are written in a conversational, at times even tentative, tone. Few would have guessed correctly the issue he would choose to address in his first one - the relationship between the erotic and the sacred, which he saw very positively. He is more a thinker out loud than a Pope who wants to turn his personal opinions into Church doctrine overnight, a tendency of his predecessor. The fact that he does not always calculate the impact of his remarks in advance has made him look occasionally prone to gaffes, particularly on delicate matters of interfaith relations. But when he told reporters on his way to the United States this week that the clerical sexual abuse scandal in that country made him "deeply ashamed", his frankness was widely welcomed. It was also what America needed to hear.

His support for the Tridentine Rite and his revision of its Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews did hint at a certain nostalgia for pre-conciliar times. The manner of the rite's reintroduction, overriding the jurisdiction of local bishops, set alarm bells ringing that his conception of how power should be exercised in the Church was still top-down and not very collegial. And some of those who speak in his name are not helping his cause.

The Vatican cannot micro-manage every detail of the local Church, yet its tendency to prefer safe pairs of hands to original thinkers in episcopal appointments has resulted in few bishops able to inspire their flocks with visionary leadership. Benedict has yet to reverse this trend, whether in diocesan appointments or at the top of the Roman Curia. The instruments of government in the Church have still to be reformed: that task may await his successor.

However, it is as a visible, almost iconic, public representation of the modern Catholic Church that the Pope will be judged, and, in that, style matters as much as content. Here he has to be rated a success. He has been disinclined to be judgemental, for instance, recognising that a Church that is only ever heard saying "No" will attract few and repel many. He says what he thinks and yet is not pompous about it. His election to the papacy has revealed Joseph Ratzinger to be warmer and more human than his image projected; and as a man, even at 81, of formidable intellect and character. Measured against those who might have succeeded John Paul II if he had not, the cardinals are seen to have chosen well.