Politically savvy as well as conservative

World leaders must be eating their hearts out. They would sell their souls for even a fraction of the adulation and media attention the new Pope, Benedict XVI, is attracting. And the Vatican is lapping it up, producing an epic of Hollywood proportions.

It started with Pope John Paul's final illness through to his funeral and on to waiting for a new Pope, and now another star is born, albeit an elderly one. The way the Vatican has monopolised the world news in recent months is unprecedented, which says a lot about how the Vatican's PR machinery has evolved.

If any of you saw the Pope's 'press conference' with journalists on television, you would know what I am talking about.

The Pope emerged into the huge marbled Sala Nervi with unusual diagonal pillars of a simple geometric design, which were stunning. A wide flight of steps led up to the stage, which was as impressive as a James Bond movie indoor set.

The Pope, in white, with the Swiss Guards in their multi-coloured, distinctive uniforms in the background and a group of cardinals in their black gowns and deep purple sashes and skull caps, in that huge white space formed an amazing tableau. It was an incredible life imitating art scene.

Then the Pope raised his arms in greeting and showed us a bit of ankle and his red leather slippers, which at once made him seem vulnerable.

The crowd was almost in a frenzy, more reminiscent of a rock concert, or an international football match between the world's best teams. It was almost surreal with all the chanting and the clapping. It was as though the programme director had mistakenly switched to a camera at another event.

You had the staid, serene scene on stage and the audience going wild in the auditorium.

There was no doubt that the Vatican had produced another star. Although Pope John Paul is a hard act to follow, Pope Benedict has started off incredibly well.

Obviously awestruck by all the adulation, the man who was reputededly arrogant and tough, looked sheepish and nervously murmured "grazie" to his enthusiastic audience.

I was hooked.

About 4,000 journalists had been called in to be thanked for the media coverage of the historical events at the Vatican.

However, they did not fill the immense hall, and Vatican personnel allowed tourists in to fill the vacant seats.

Peter Gould, who was present reporting for the BBC, called this "a smart move by the Vatican. Pilgrims, being less cynical than hardened journalists, could be relied on to cheer and clap in the right places."

However, the television cameras had a better view than he had and it showed many of the journalists present, if not as unrestrained as the tourists, cheering and clapping enthusiastically. So much so that I thought they had been handpicked.

So it seems that even the 'hardened cynics' were carried by the sheer excitement of the event.

When the audience finally calmed down, the Pope delivered his message to the journalists in Italian, English, French and German, and each language had a slightly different message to prevent monotony.

"Thanks to all of you, these historically important events have had worldwide coverage," he said.

"I know how hard you have worked, far away from your homes and families, for long hours and in sometimes difficult conditions."

After about 15 minutes, He rose from his throne to give his blessing. Then he waved and with the words "Grazie, arrivederci!" he left the stage.

I had been expecting a question and answer session with the press, but that did not happen. So although it was billed as a press conference, it was not. But what the event did do was change any preconceived ideas about the 78-year-old former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the oldest man to be elected Pope since 1730.

The Bavarian who had been described as a stern, dogmatic disciplinarian, metamorphosed into a friendly, gentle, humble man of peace.

Of course it is early days, and he might, once he has got over his stagefright, revert to the person the media found difficult.

But somehow I do not think so. You do not need to be arrogant if you are the Pope. He now has a very different role to his previous one. His last 23 years were spent as John Paul's chief enforcer of doctrinal orthodoxy.

His new persona is one of disarming people and charming them and he started doing this effectively and immediately on becoming Pope.

When he arrived late at the audience for German pilgrims on Monday he apologised and quipped in German that he might have lost his Teutonic punctuality after too many years in Rome. "It seems I've become a bit of an Italian," he joked to laughter and cheers.

In his inaugural sermon, he used a desert analogy, saying: "there are so many kinds of desert - the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love.

"There is the desert of God's darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life.

"The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast. Therefore the earth's treasures no longer serve to build God's garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction.

"The Church as a whole and all her pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God."

In those few words the Pope encapsulated all the ingredients affecting the world's problems. He humbly asked his flock to pray for him that "he may learn to love more and more" the Lord and his flock and may not "flee for fear of the wolves".

The Pope also appealed for "indugence if I make mistakes, like any person does", or if some things that the Pope has to say and do on the basis of his conscience or the conscience of the Church seem hard to understand.

All in all Pope Benedict has confounded his critics who were sceptical and branded him as inflexible. He has shown remarkable dexterity.

What I found strange are the people who kept harping on about him being conservative. The Catholic Church is conservative, the last Pope was conservative. That is why we did not get a black Pope or even a Latin American one. At least the Vatican is now electing a different European.

But the cardinals opted to work on where they are losing ground rather than where they have a very safe majority. So they are politically savvy as well as conservative.

phansen@timesofmalta.com