He’s been silent for a couple of weeks, but today Sandro Magister is back – no real news, but more of a summary of the Benedict papacy so far.

The gist? Benedict wants the Church to be leaven, salt, seed and light, and is interested in encounter and dialogue with the world, from a standpoint of committed faith in Christ.

He demonstrated this during his trip to Cologne, in the heart of Protestant Europe. To the heirs of Luther and Calvin, Benedict XVI offered the image of a pontiff on pilgrimage to the relics of the Magi and in adoration before the sacred host: this is as Catholic as one can get, as far as one can get from a bare faith without pope, saints, symbols, or the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist, as is the state of modern Protestantism.

He told the representatives of the Protestant communities that he does not believe in an ecumenism made of negotiations on how to democratize the Churches. For the pope, the first question to put on the agenda for Christians is how to bear witness to the Word of God to the world. And the second is how to respond in unison to the “great ethical questions posed by our time” without giving way to the reigning relativistic culture.

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Another symbolic goal that Benedict XVI has outlined among his “priorities” is the Holy Land. For a long time, Ratzinger’s positions on Judaism have been among the most advanced of all in the Catholic world. And he restated these on August 19 while visiting the synagogue of Cologne.

For the pope, the covenant God established with Israel is still valid, even after the coming of Jesus. But the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, is convinced that Israel has been repudiated by God and replaced with the Church. On September 8, Benedict XVI placed at Sabbah’s side a coadjutor closer to his own outlook who is destined to succeed the patriarch, Fouad Tawl, a Jordanian by birth, formerly the archbishop of Tunisia.

On September 15, the pope received at Castel Gandolfo the two chief rabbis of Israel, Shlomo Moshe Ama, a Sephardic Jew, and Yona Metzger, an Ashkenazi, who renewed the invitation to visit Jerusalem.

And in mid-November he will be visited by Moshe Katsav, in the first visit ever made to the Vatican by a president of the state of Israel.

Even with the Muslim exponents he met in Cologne on August 20, pope Ratzinger acted with all his cards showing. He did not visit the mosque, as they had asked him to do; he received them at the archbishop’s residence with a great crucifix behind him. He urged them to become teachers of peace, even while so many bad masters are preaching in mosques and madrassas in Europe and throughout the world.

Seven days later, on August 27, he received at Castel Gandolfo the writer Oriana Fallaci, the professed atheist so incendiary in defending Christianity from Muslim attack.

But this audience was no surprise, coming from a pope like Benedict XVI. He has always sought out meetings with dyed-in-the-wool secularists, from the Frankfurt philosopher Jürgen Habermas to the famous aforementioned author of the “Letter to a child never born” and “Anger and pride.” On repeated occasions, including as pope, Ratzinger has asked nonbelievers to live “quasi Deus daretur,” as though God existed. One main motivation is that in today’s world, “moral values can stand only if God exists.” And another motive is that “this would be a first step for them in drawing nearer to the faith.”