In an editorial that appeared in the July 30 edition of L’Osservatore Romano,
Giovanni Maria Vian, the newspaper’s editor, emphasized the continuity
between Pope Francis and his predecessors of the past five decades. World Youth Day, noted Vian, “was not planned by the first American and Latin American Pontiff but arranged some time ago by his predecessor.”
Pope Francis’s decision to issue the text of Lumen Fidei, when most of had been written by Pope Benedict, is likewise “a very powerful indication of continuity which confirms that in their obvious diversity they are both complementary and on the same wavelength.”
At World Youth Day, said Vian, Pope Francis’s “meetings with the bishops and talks with the journalists, concentrated at the end of the journey, seem to have been particularly important.
They confirm, at different levels, two fundamental strategic decisions of the papacy in the second half of the 20th century, which the Bishop of Rome now intends to develop with highly effective personal emphases: media communication and the synodal method.”
“Under the banner of the Second Vatican Council, conceived of and opened by John XXIII, both these decisions are deeply indebted to the revolutionary decisions of Paul VI,” continued Vian.
“His pastoral staff is used by Pope Francis who in Brazil also wore a red stole of his, with images of the Apostles Peter and Paul.”