Pope Benedict XVI has been in office for only 16 months, but he is already preparing for his fourth foreign journey next week and a fifth in November. The pace is identical to the beginning of the whirlwind reign of the late John Paul II, and yet the German Pope has again indicated that he wants his own pontificate to be quieter and less “activist” than his Polish predecessor’s.

He justified scaling back his activities at a recent Sunday Angelus by quoting a twelfth-century letter in which St Bernard of Clairvaux admonishes Pope Eugene III for trying to do too much work. “This he says to the pope of that time and to all popes,” Benedict said in the remarks on 20 August. “Much work often leads to hardness of heart,” the 79-year-old Pope continued, saying that “dedication to silence and contemplation” was needed to properly balance our other activities.

The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, elaborated on the theme the next Sunday by dedicating several articles to what one large headline in the weekly insert called “the primacy of contemplation”. An editorial on the front page of that 27 August issue summarised it thus: “Our getting all worked up will not save the world.” The subtitle of the piece said “activism” had “contaminated everyone”.

It so happened that the paper hit the news- stands on Saturday afternoon as several thousand peace activists – including scores of Catholic groups – had gathered in the town of Assisi to rally for an end to violence and war in the Middle East. The town’s bishop and several other prelates, the Franciscans, Pax Christi and the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah (via a message) participated in the peace march. But the Vatican newspaper and the Pope never acknowledged it. The gathering has taken place annually since 1961 to call for peace in different parts of the world and has customarily included mostly left-wing political parties and pacifist groups. But that did not deter Pope John Paul II from sending a message of support in 2002 when the groups held an extraordinary march for peace in the Middle East.

However, the current Pope has long been cautious of the Church entering into initiatives with groups that do not profess the Christian creed, concerned that such partnerships risk diminishing the distinctive nature of Catholicism. The most noted example was his opposition to his predecessor’s interreligious prayer meeting in Assisi in October 1986. The then-Cardinal Ratzinger refused to attend the gathering, which a number of conservative Catholic groups denounced as a form of syncretism. It is not surprising, then, that he has dissuaded any major celebration of that event’s twentieth anniversary by declining to participate in any such gathering. However, he did meet leaders of the Sant’Egidio Community this week, which will host a modest commemorative meeting in the Franciscan hilltop town next Monday and Tuesday. The biggest name on the programme is Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz of Krakow, Pope John Paul’s life-long personal secretary.