Benedict blunder shows he has failed to master media machine
Sep 15 10:45 AM US/Eastern
By unwittingly angering Muslims with his comments on Islam, Pope Benedict XVI has shown that he has yet to shake off his academic theological roots and master the global media machine with the same deftness as his predecessor.
In clinging to theology and orthodoxy, the bookish Benedict has shown little regard for media management in getting his message across, unlike the communications-savvy John Paul II.
Benedict railed Muslims when he quoted a 14th-century Christian emperor who said the Prophet Mohammed had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things, portraying the Islam he founded as a religion which endorses violence, where faith is "spread by the sword".
Not for the first time in the 17-month-old pontificate, the Vatican has been forced to backtrack with a statement aimed at smoothing ruffled diplomatic feathers.
Benedict seeks to "cultivate an attitude of respect and dialogue toward other religions and cultures and obviously also toward Islam," the Vatican said.
Earlier this year, the German-born head of the Roman Catholic Church fell foul of Israel when he omitted to mention the Jewish State in the list of countries which were victims of terrorism.
In May, during a visit to the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in Poland, he appeared to absolve the German people from any responsibility for Nazism, saying the country had itself fallen victim to a "band of criminals" in the 1930s.
The gaffes are all the more surprising because his first year as pope had been a smooth transition from the era of John Paul II, with none of the hardline decisions many had expected from the former cardinal who earned the epithet "God's Rottweiler" for cracking down on Church dissidents.
Whereas John Paul, elected pope at the age of 58, had decades to perfect his role as Christianity's "great communicator", his timid 79-year-old successor has had little time to shed his image as a dour defender of the faith, honed by 24 years as the Vatican's doctrinal enforcer.
Despite this, he has seemed increasingly more at ease in his public appearances, never more so than during his visit this week to his Bavarian homeland, where the pope seemed almost jolly at times to be among his own people.
But at times he seems a prisoner of his former role as prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, and his years as a theology professor at Regensburg University, his message often clouded by high-flown doctrinal language.
Benedict had highlighted closer ties between Christians and Muslims, and Christians and Jews as priorities of his pontificate within days of his election in April last year.
He met both Muslim and Jewish leaders in Cologne a few months later, during his first foreign visit as leader of the world's more than one billion Roman Catholics.
In a few hours at Regensburg University on Tuesday night, he undid much of the groundwork done in Cologne a year before, and must now use his late-November visit to Turkey and its 70-million Muslim population as a major bridge-building exercise.
Given the diplomatic battle ahead to placate the Muslim world, the pope may wish to still have at his side Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, the Vatican's top expert on Islam until Benedict controversially transferred him as papal nuncio to Cairo.
Many Vatican watchers at the time believed it was a blunder to move the respected British archbishop at a time when relations with Islam had assumed such a high profile.
He also has yet to rebuild ties with the Russian Orthodox Church, which has accused Rome of proselytism in traditionally-Orthodox areas of eastern Europe.
Benedict was born in the Bavarian town of Marktl am Inn on April 16, 1927.
He has acknowledged that he was enrolled into the Hitler Youth during World War II, but much against his will. And he has been widely praised by Jewish organisations for his stand against anti-Semitism.
He was ordained priest in 1951, spent much of his early career as a theology professor and became archbishop of Munich in March 1977, later moving to the Vatican.
His housekeeper, Ingrid Stampa, has described him as a modest man of simple tastes. He rarely drinks wine as it gives him a headache, likes Italian cuisine but prefers German food, such as dumplings and apfelstrudel (apple pie).
He has shown an unexpected fondness for high fashion, wearing Prada shoes and Gucci sunglasses, and he has taken to wearing traditional hats not worn by popes for decades.
He is said to speak 10 languages, although the Italian press has commented on his German accent, and is an accomplished pianist.
Benedict's brother Georg, also a priest but three years his elder, has said that "health-wise he is not very robust. His heart is not very good." He has continued to express such worries since his election.
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