If you are not a Catholic I don’t think you can completely understand how important the pope’s visit to America was.

I am not Catholic and actually am Lutheran. Martin Luther broke with the Catholic Church and formed our church so it seems funny that I would write about this historic visit.

Pope John Paul II had the appeal of a rock star when he came to visit the United States. He was revered and beloved and the world mourned his passing.

Most of us didn’t know anything about the new pope whose name is Joseph Alois Ratzinger. He is the second oldest man to be chosen to lead the Church. Only Pope Clement was older and he was pope from 1730 to 1740.

Pope Benedict was born in Bavaria, Germany in 1927 to a mother who was a homemaker and a father who was a policeman. He has a brother still living, but his sister died in 1991.

When he was only 5, he was one of the children chosen to present flowers to a visiting cardinal and afterwards announced he would be a pope when he grew up. He grew up in the war years and as a German he was required by a law passed in 1939 to join Hitler’s Youths when he turned 14 years old. He would not attend any of their meetings and did not believe in the Nazi cause.

His father was a bitter enemy of Nazism, perhaps because his 14-year-old nephew had been a victim of "cleansing" having been born a Downs Syndrome child.
Pope Benedict’s career was spent in the academic field after completing the priesthood. He is apparently brilliant and fluently speaks German, Italian, French, English, Spanish, Latin and some Portuguese. He also reads another two languages, Greek and Hebrew.

His red shoes are not really made by Prada as rumor has it, but rather by his personal cobbler. He has returned to some of the vestments worn by earlier popes and not seen in many years.

I admired the way he persistently talked of the priest sex scandal with altar boys. He went so far as to privately meet with some of the abuse victims, which would surely go a long way to help heal them. The tradition has been to sweep this under the rug, transfer the offending priest and not talk about it. Pope Benedict, I think, did the right thing by talking about the abuse, acknowledging that it happened and even has discussed changes in canon laws that govern how these situations are handled. The laws would probably be changed to extend the statute of limitations as the Church is now realizing that the children are more apt to come forward as adults.

Pope Benedict also preaches of love, not fear of consequences and wants a return to fundamental Christian values both for Europe and the United States.

I think it will be interesting to watch him. He has brought a freshness to the papacy and maybe it was time.