Few deaths taste like a question mark like that of Joseph Ratzinger. On the last day of the year, almost through the back door, with an intense brilliance, with a prodigious bibliography, with a serene example of humility, with many uncomfortable truths calmly exposed, with a luminous intelligence and an evident goodness and, nevertheless, with more sambenitos than such a discreet person could bear.
There are many questions about the man who was Pope Emeritus that history, posthumous books and reflections aloud will answer about one of the most powerful figures of our time, both for the Catholic Church and for the rest of humanity.
In this interval of time in which people who feel challenged by such an atomic biography are taking stock, my question is: what do Benedict XVI's life and work teach us about good communication?
The Pope Emeritus was Bavarian, shy, intellectual, discreet. He was not a mass communicator. After the stellar pontificate of Saint John Paul II, a very priestly and unphotogenic professor arrived at Peter's see, who came from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who was German, and who looked at the ground during press conferences on aeroplanes, because it seemed that he was embarrassed to pontificate, being the Supreme Pontiff himself.
The media did not understand his anti-instagram persona, his enlightened speech without easy headlines and to be read with an underlining pen, and his shallow gestures, so untelevised. Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was not a politician, but a philosopher whom providence was climbing the ladder of ministerial service to the top of the Vatican almost by fits and starts, because the clear-eyed man who lived through a world war had an allergy to human glories, as others have an allergy to anonymity.
Benedict XVI was a man in search of truth and meaning in an epidermal world where we started with selfies and likes, and where a style of viral communication was progressively unleashed at full speed. It was a gift in a universe where all eyes are focused on the wrapping. And this kind antithesis is a point-blank question about the conscience of an entire profession, which continues to be the mouthpiece of a liquid society and must offer solid moorings, because there is no longer anyone who can bear this intermittent and occasional opportunism of the physical lightness of being for just a few moments.
An ode to coherence
Joseph Ratzinger's biography is an ode to coherence, and that alone is a solid gold headline. Although it is best understood when there is faith, anyone who values honesty and goodness appreciates the treasure.
His texts before and after becoming Pope are a conscience-brightener where the connection between faith and reason sing bingo in the heads in which common sense and the deepest human aspirations are married in the highest degree. His encyclicals, which penetrate to the depths of the reader's marrow. His commentaries on the life of Jesus Christ, which tell us of a priest who does not sell smoke, but the fruits of his inner harvest. The overwhelmingly serene logic. The luminosity of his excellent prose. The beauty of a message without prestidigitation. The knowledge of the human condition. The growing wisdom, the uncompromising culture, the extraordinary education. Peace and bridges of dialogue with people outside the faith. The eagerness to understand and to build. The authenticity of an intention that achieves results by looking straight ahead and in depth.
Humanly attractive subject. Intellectually capable word. An honestly noble and respectable preacher. How many people have approached God and the Catholic Church by reading his proposals? How many have better understood human beings thanks to his proposals and the openness of his horizons? How many have appreciated the scope of good over the demolishing effect of evil by looking carefully at each letter, each step, each timid but true look of a man who avoided the spotlight, but who had a light of his own?
Questions. Silences. Parentheses. The death of Benedict XVI is an interesting and necessary pause to better understand that good communication is not this way of spewing out content without knowing if it is true and regardless of whether it is a lie, even if the prestige of people or institutions dies along the way, and even if post-truth and malice sicken the human relationships that also condition our happiness.
The death of Joseph Ratzinger is an occasion to forever veil the corpse of the bad press that does not listen if it drowns in prejudice, and to bury as never before that opportunistic communication that sells holograms designed with strategies of intentional falsehood.
There are those who have understood the soul of Benedict XVI, and therefore judge his life and his work as a whirlwind of light for the world, also because all people who combine goodness and intelligence embellish our times. Communication is not a disguise, therefore, to understand the message, it is impossible to remain in the shell. What a good posthumous encyclical from a pope in the form of a stop, a much more progressive stop than those that preserve inertia. Let us rethink. Let us reorient our course of navigation. Let us take advantage of the talent of our time to continue searching for truth with more resources. Let us communicate good and evil well. Then we will be free, but free without posturing hangovers.
Most probably, Ratzinger will one day be a doctor of the Church. Logical. For many he will also be a master of good communication, despite the crooked lines with which we have told his story. Let us remember his words in his farewell as Pope: "Thank you from the bottom of my heart and I ask forgiveness for my mistakes".