Various interesting items from John Allen this week, including this observation from an African cardinal, about the importance of Benedict and his specific background at this specific moment in history:

Do you look forward to a day when a papal encyclical will begin by citing an African proverb rather than a line from Nietzsche?

"I don’t see anything stopping the pope from citing African proverbs. This will come as we have some good Africans among the drafters of the encyclicals who are familiar with our traditional wisdom. …

"When Benedict quotes Nietzsche and Descartes, these are the people with whom he’s familiar, and I don’t believe that’s an accident. We must start with the faith position that, apart from anything else, it’s the Holy Spirit who is behind who emerges as pope. As soon as this pope was elected, the first thing that came to my mind was that the greatest challenge facing the Catholic church today is how to restore the spirit of the church to this technological, advanced, powerful Western world. It’s as if the Holy Spirit chose somebody who can address the culture in its own language, drawing on its own philosophers, both good and bad. …

"To be blunt, when Ratzinger critiques German theological currents or the European Union and its philosophical positions, it has an impact. If an African pope were to say the same things, people would say, ‘He’s an African, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’ Even with John Paul II, there was sometimes an undercurrent of dismissal. People said he’s been in Poland all this time, he’s trying to force the church into a kind of Polish model. I don’t think that was true, but it was said. No one will be able to make such a case for Benedict XVI.

"If this pope can find a way to help the Western world recover a sense of God, and to try to reflect it in public life, it would be a great blessing for Europe and for the rest of us."