DIALOGUE

By DANIEL PHILPOTT

Among Pope Benedict XVI's early statements -- all of which church watchers have scrutinized exhaustively -- one of the most interesting was his explanation of his name. In choosing Benedict XVI, was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger evoking Pope Benedict XV, proclaimer of peace during World War I, as some were convinced? Or was he looking to St. Benedict of the 6th century, evangelizer of Europe, as other argued? In his first general audience in St. Peter's Square, the new pope, perhaps exercising Solomonic wisdom, revealed that both Benedicts inspired him.

The influence of the early Benedict is unsurprising. "Patriarch of western monasticism," founder of the first monastic order, a force behind the spread of Christianity throughout Europe, this Benedict is well known both inside and outside the Catholic Church.

Benedict XV, by contrast, is a largely forgotten pope, his pleas for peace muted by the carnage at the Somme and Verdun. But this seems to be just the theme that Benedict XVI desires to remember -- and perpetuate. Benedict XV "was a ... prophet of peace who struggled strenuously and bravely, first to avoid the drama of war and then to limit its terrible consequences," Benedict XVI declared in his address. "In his footsteps I place my ministry, in the service of reconciliation and harmony between peoples, profoundly convinced that the great good of peace is above all a gift of God."

Pope Benedict XV is forgotten, too, for having commended to the victor nations a practice that is central in the message of Jesus, but unusual and even surprising in the realm of politics, one that the Catholic Church itself had long confined to the confessional: forgiveness. If Benedict XVI wants to perpetuate Benedict XV's legacy of peace and reconciliation, might he then retrieve, revive and teach nations today the principle of forgiveness?

John Paul II had in fact taken up and advanced the project in his own pontificate. He spoke with the singular credibility of a sufferer, having lived through a Nazi occupation, then a totalitarian communist regime, in his native Poland. Shortly after becoming pope, he wrote an encyclical, "Rich in Mercy," which he closed with an appeal for nations to practice forgiveness. He became globally famous for mercy and forgiveness when he pardoned his would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, in a personal meeting in 1983. His strongest teaching of forgiveness as a political ethic, though, came in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In his subsequent "Message for the World Day of Peace," he appended to Paul VI's famous aphorism, "no peace without justice" the phrase "no justice without forgiveness." John Paul II died on the Sabbath eve Divine Mercy Sunday, 2005.

In the din of commentary following Sept.11, John Paul II's call for forgiveness arrived like a Renaissance holy fool -- cheekily provocative, but also enigmatic: Who exactly was to forgive? President Bush? The American people? And who were they to forgive? Osama bin Laden? Islam? Is it possible to forgive while also warring against one's attackers, which John Paul II, after all, affirmed was just?

What is now needed is a social ethic of forgiveness, one that explains when, how and under what circumstances nations ought to practice the principle. Were Benedict XVI to take up this challenge, he would be forging an important development in the long tradition of Catholic social thought, a tradition that offers a rich legacy of doctrines about the justice of war -- ones now ensconced in international law and U.S. military doctrine -- but that provides little guidance for societies like Iraq or Bosnia, or Rwanda or Northern Ireland, which have already been devastated by war or dictatorial rule and are now seeking to rebuild.

Forgiveness in politics is rare, critics will point out, and for good reason: It is utopian. But one day before Benedict XVI was elected, The New York Times carried the following headline: "Atrocity victims in Uganda choose to forgive." In the mid-1990s, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu proposed that wounded countries have "no future without forgiveness" and encouraged it through his country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Half a decade earlier in Chile, President Patricio Aylwin called for national repentance for the torture and killing of thousands during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Militants and civilians, politicians and prelates have also granted and received forgiveness in El Salvador, East Germany, Northern Ireland, Guatemala and elsewhere.

Most of these voices advocate forgiveness as one of several practices in a larger process of reconciliation, complementary to the public telling of the truth about past injustices, reparations, apologies and, most of all, accountability for offenders. These are the ingredients of an ethic of forgiveness. Weaving them together and passing the product along to the world is a job for which a global moral leader with an impressive intellect -- like the new pope -- is uniquely suited. In an era when war is fueled anew by the deepest sorts of identities -- religious, ethnic, national, and civilizational -- forgiveness may well prove Benedict's greatest legacy.

Daniel Philpott is a political scientist and faculty fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

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