The '18th' Pope Benedict, not the 16th

CABLE TV, the Internet and text messaging have made the world seem smaller, and these past few weeks, they bridged the distance between us and Rome through the TV and computer screens. Despite the advances in technology, historical method made me surf the different cable channels doing live coverage of John Paul II's funeral. The images were exactly the same, so were the sound and text. It was in the translation of the proceedings and, more importantly, in their commentaries where the channels differed. Depending on the station you were watching or the resource person explaining what was on screen, you had a choice between plain descriptive narration (and often misinformed or misleading opinion) and some really erudite explanations of the colorful rites and rituals of the Vatican.

However, the coverage of the papal funeral and the conclave should alert us to the fact that what appears to be objective or factual news is actually filtered information given a particular viewpoint, bias, or spin; the same story given different shades of color, depending on who is reading the news.

For example, immediately after German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's as the newly minted Benedict XVI, people wanted to know more about him. While researchers were putting together a brief biography of the man who is now the Pope, TV news had to fill in the vacuum and started by unfairly comparing the poor man with his charismatic and photogenic predecessor John Paul II. While Benedict XVI has written a number of books, these are not so well known outside professional theological circles. The result has been to describe the new Pope on his track record as an "ultra conservative," as a "scourge of liberals," even worse, as "the enforcer." As the head of a Vatican office that used to be known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition, he is being painted into a corner even before he has defined the map of his papacy.

We also tend to forget that Benedict XVI is both a political leader -- the head of the State of Vatican City, which is a country smaller in size than the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman, Quezon City -- and a spiritual leader to millions of people who call themselves Roman Catholics, practicing or non-practicing. These overlapping functions result in different beliefs and opinions. For example, the conclave can be seen as a mere election of a pope by the College of Cardinals, or it can be seen as an action guided by the Holy Spirit, which explains why the reporting in the Catholic channel EWTN was different from that in the BBC or our very own GMA Network. We must remember to step back from our TV and computer screens and rethink what kind of information we are being fed.

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Even before the late Pope John Paul II was buried, I dug out my copy of "The Oxford Dictionary of Popes" compiled by J.N.D. Kelley. It had gathered a lot of dust on my shelves. I acquired the book long ago when, as an overzealous monk, I resolved to read it cover to cover during Lent, both as an act of research and as an act of penance. I never got past Page 5, so opening the book again unleashed a flood of happy memories, especially memories of the readings done during meals in monastic or religious communities. Many monastics dreaded the classic multi-volume "Lives of the Popes," which often caused indigestion instead of providing edification during meals.

It is the appropriate time to brush up on some papal history. I started reading up on Benedict XV and, of course, St. Benedict of Nursia, patron of Europe, and founder of the various groups of monastics known as the Benedictines, who are spread worldwide. In the Philippines the most prominent Benedictines are those that run the San Beda and St. Scholastica schools. Since Cardinal Ratzinger is not a monastic and does not seem to have a monastic bent aside from his theological scholarship, it is obvious he was not thinking of St. Benedict when he chose his papal name. I tried in vain to find some connection between Benedict XVI and Benedict XV, who was pope from 1914-22, during World War I. No connection here either, so I turned to the dictionary of popes only to find that there are actually 18 Pope Benedicts, three of whom were not officially recognized and are thus considered "antipopes." To complicate things further, Benedict X, although an antipope, is reckoned in the counting while Benedict XIII and XIV are not; thus we have two sets of Benedict XIII and XIV and they can only be distinguished by checking the years of their pontificate.

If the reckoning of Pope Benedicts leading to the present Benedict XVI can be problematic to a historian, it seems that even the way we count from St. Peter all the way to Benedict XVI has also been a cause of some discussion. While it is accepted that the present Pope's authority traces its roots all the way back to St. Peter, who was commissioned by Jesus Christ as the chief of the apostles, there used to be a school of thought that started counting from St. Linus (c. 66-c. 78) who was -- according to the earliest reliable succession lists of the bishops of Rome -- commissioned by Saints Peter and Paul when they established the Church in Rome. Thus, technically he is the first bishop of Rome, the first pope. Later on, the counting started with St. Peter, and thus St. Linus became the second pope.

What appears like hair-splitting just illustrates that research will reveal that the pope, the papacy and everything else in the world are more complicated than can be contained in a sound byte.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.