A good day for a change

[fpb]

Today I got some paying work as a translator, which was great. I translated a piece of political communication which struggled to right a major wrong and to undo a political Berlusconi crime, which was even better - it is so good to be paid for work you would do unpaid. Finally, the Conclave elected the man I was hoping for. I am not sure whether Pope Benedict XVI Ratzinger is the man I feel the Church needs - someone with attention to all the administrative and procedural matters that John Paul, however great, had allowed to deteriorate so shockingly. I know that he is a German, and that usually helps - Germans without administrative abilities are few and far between. But I know that his election is a kick in the teeth for the whole BBC "the Church must adapt itself to the modern world" party. Christians will not be driven out of their own mother Church just yet, as they are being driven out of the main Protestant denominations and struggling to survive among the Anglicans. The war has only just begun.

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[fpb.livejournal.com]

...and in good health and mental strength. No doubt the cardinals did not want another long papacy - it is rather a rule that a long-lived Pope is succeeded by an elderly one, as Pius XII by John XXIII. However sometimes the calculation backfires. The great Leo XIII was elected on the calculation that he was an old man already - and he lived to be 98 and one of the giants of modern Church history. (In his last years, he met an American bishop who said sadly, "Your Holiness, I fear we may never meet in this world again." "Why, my lord" answered the Pope, "I had no idea you were in poor health.")