Therefore when Josef Ratzinger chose this name, he signalled to the world his intent to open dialogue with his Jewish counterparts. Benedict is a name that many recognize of the Cistercian founder, St Bernard of Claivaux. The Cistercians are Benedictines and Benedictines have a history of sheltering the persecuted in their distress, including St Frances and the refugees that were bombarded by the American forces at Monte Cassino at the end of the Second World War.
Benedictines hid children from the Nazis within their monasteries during the Second World War. During a convention for the Hidden Children, an elderly man happily sat down by me to tell me his story.
"You'll never guess who my father is..." he said as he whipped out an old curled photograph...
And I started laughing. "A Benedictine," I said after a quick glance at the picture.
"How could you know?" He asked...
And really I couldn't tell him how I knew it. It was just instinctive from having known a very good man from Rome who'd been a Benedictine scholar. Besides, I'd stood beneath the giant sculpture of papa Benedict in St Paul's in Rome. Even dead for centuries, his shadow stretches over us.
(St Paul without the Walls http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13369a.h...
"Without people like you," he said, trying to ease the bitter insult I'd just received, "none of us would have survived. It's only because of the people who had the courage to hide us when their own lives were at risk. The fathers were good to us. And they were watched. Each one of them risked their lives to protect us and never tried to convert us. ..."
Sometimes the world likes to see the negative. Fingers point at Benedict's predecessor, Pius XII, with the calls to open the war archives of the Vatican. When the Vatican remains silent, there are instant accusations, but few people stop to think that it is extremely rare for any archive to open its holdings earlier than seventy years or only after the people within the records are deceased. Consider the furor over Deep Throat-and that was only Watergate.
