During his nearly eight-year reign, Pope Benedict XVI made 25 trips outside Italy. He was above all an "intellectual traveler," endeavoring to draw a clear line shaping Christian thought, and striving to derive a coherent system from it. This spiritual and intellectual adventure came to a climax on September 12, 2008, with his speech at the Collège des Bernardins, a key stop during his journey to Paris.
Benedict XVI in Paris
"This first day was a media success for the Pope and — surprisingly — a popular success in the avenues of the capital. At around 6:30 p.m., on the road to Notre-Dame de Paris, the crowds were out in force," recounted the commentator on France 2's 8 o'clock news that evening.
On September 12, 2008, Parisian journalists were astonished to see so many young people drawn to the Pope, who was reputed to be shy — he described himself as a "bookworm" — and rather reticent about crowds and travel.
A few hours earlier, after his official welcome at the Elysée Palace, Benedict XVI gave the inaugural lecture at the Collège des Bernardins. He came to launch the cultural program of this former convent, long used as a fire station, then rehabilitated by the Paris Diocese to become a place of training and cultural exchange on the initiative of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, who died a year before Benedict XVI's visit.
The lessons of monasticism
The German pope, speaking in perfect, delicate French that surprises and captivates millions of viewers, proposes a journey back in time to the adventure of Western monasticism as a founding element of European culture.
"Young monks came to live here in order to learn to understand their vocation more deeply and to be more faithful to their mission. We are in a place that is associated with the culture of monasticism. Does this still have something to say to us today, or are we merely encountering the world of the past?" asks Benedict XVI, in a reflection that is both academic and straightforward.
The Pope evokes "the great cultural upheaval resulting from migrations of peoples and the emerging new political configurations," explaining that "monasteries were the places where the treasures of ancient culture survived, and where at the same time a new culture slowly took shape out of the old."
Searching for God
But building this culture was not an end in itself. Fundamentally, these monks "were searching for God. They wanted to go from the inessential to the essential, to the only truly important and reliable thing there is," says Benedict XVI.
He goes on to explain that this search for God remains a very current challenge, even in large, anonymous, secularized cities like Paris, where, "God has truly become for many the great unknown."
"But just as in the past, when behind the many images of God the question concerning the unknown God was hidden and present, so too the present absence of God is silently besieged by the question concerning him," explains Benedict XVI, knowing full well that part of his audience is atheist or agnostic.
"What gave Europe’s culture its foundation – the search for God and the readiness to listen to him – remains today the basis of any genuine culture," adds the German pope, keen to promote Europe's Christian roots.
A sympathetic ear for a prestigious "colleague"
Among the 650 political and cultural figures in attendance were former French presidents Jacques Chirac and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, as well as figures as diverse as Robert Badinter, Jacques Delors, Max Gallo, Michael Lonsdale, Jean Tiberi, Régis Debray and Dalil Boubakeur, then rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris.
Attendees were astonished by the intellectual stature of this academic pope, particularly the members of the Institut de France, who were flattered to be referred to as "colleagues" by this prestigious lecturer, some of whom knew him personally.
The then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had in fact been elected in 1992 as an associate foreign member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (Academy of Moral and Political Sciences), in chair number 2, succeeding former Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, who had died three years earlier, shortly after his rehabilitation by Gorbachev. Somewhat unusually, this chair 2, reserved for the Academy's foreign associates, was also that of the British writer Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), the famous author of The Jungle Book.
By becoming an associate member of the Institut de France, Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, gave theology a special place in French academic circles. Before him, still among foreign associates, Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar had occupied chair 4, with a surprising successor in the person of former US president Ronald Reagan. Cardinals Henri de Lubac and Roger Etchegaray were also titular members of the Academy.
From "Panzerkardinal" to "thinker of God
Now Benedict XVI was returning to France as pope, following in the footsteps of his friend and predecessor John Paul II, who went to Paris in 1980 and 1997. He was able to speak about God on secular terrain and receive a warm welcome, in line with the acclaimed lectures he had given in France as cardinal, notably at the Sorbonne in the run-up to the year 2000. He was able to make a trip that Paul VI — a pope in love with France, a country he described as "the oven where the intellectual bread of Christianity is baked" — was unable to make.
On that Friday in September 2008, Benedict XVI provided grist for the mill for his French interlocutors who, even without sharing faith in the Eucharist, needed to be nourished by good spiritual and intellectual food, and were able to place themselves in full communion of thought with the German pontiff. The man who at the start of his pontificate was ironically described as the "Panzerkardinal" had at last become, even in the eyes of the general media, "God's thinker."
