Step by step, Benedict XVI is impressing a new form and a new style on the governance of the universal Church.
Recent days were marked by the announcement of a change in the secretary of state: from Angelo Sodano to Tarcisio Bertone.
But another event orchestrated by pope Joseph Ratzinger is of no less importance: the concert conducted in the Sistine Chapel, on Saturday, June 24, by maestro monsignor Domenico Bartolucci.
With this concert, Benedict XVI has symbolically restored the Sistine Chapel to its true maestro. Because the famous chapel is not only the sacred place decorated with the frescoes of Michelangelo, it also gives the name to the choir that for centuries has accompanied the pontifical liturgies.
Maestro Bartolucci was named the “perpetual” director, the director for life, of the Sistine Chapel by Pius XII in 1959. Under this and later popes, he was an outstanding interpreter of the liturgical music founded upon Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony. But after a long period of opposition, in 1997 he was dismissed and replaced by a choirmaster thought to be more fitting for the “popular” music dear to John Paul II.
He also has some stuff to say about the changing of the guard at the Secretariat of State:
In the case of the secretariat of state, the announcement was moved forward at the order of Benedict XVI, who by doing this wanted to cut short the resistance posed by part of the curia against his decision to appoint Bertone.
Pope Joseph Ratzinger had opted for Bertone – his main collaborator in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1995 to 2003 – for a number of months. And he had decided a number of months earlier, at least since last February, on dismissing Sodano during the summer.
But Sodano did not willingly accept his exit from the stage. Formally, he said he was ready “to hand over to others my office whenever the Holy Father wishes”: a willingness he restated one last time in a June 18 interview. But in the meantime, he put into motion a campaign of support for his remaining in office until his 80th birthday, November 23, 2007. For his part cardinal Szoka, who is the same age as Sodano, entrenched himself behind the slogan: “As long as he stays, I’m staying, too.”
The campaign was carried out by some of the cardinals formerly of the curia who had been career diplomats: Achille Silvestrini, Pio Laghi, Giovanni Cheli. Their argument against Bertone’s appointment as secretary of state was his lack of diplomatic experience: an indispensable prerogative, in their view, for a prime minister of the Holy See, especially with a pope who does not have a diplomatic background either.
So Bertone’s name, the objections to his appointment, and the names of the hypothetical alternative candidates were covered in the press long before the date anticipated by Benedict XVI for the change in the secretariat of state.
