Before he was elected pope, Joseph Ratzinger was best known and most fiercely opposed for one thing in particular: the August 6, 2000 declaration “Dominus Jesus,” “on the unicity and salvific universality of Jesus Christ and the Church.”
Benedict XVI did not cite this explicitly during his first week as pope. But in the opening mass of his pontificate, on Sunday, April 24, he did in fact repeat with great emphasis the central doctrine of “Dominus Jesus.” This doctrine is the nucleus of the faith of the New Testament.
In his homily, he said that his agenda is not “to pursue my own ideas, but to listen to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by Him.”
No sooner said than done. The first reading of the mass was from the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 4, in which Peter says of Jesus:
“There is no salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name in the whole world given to men by which we are to be saved.”
That same day, Sunday, April 24, in all the churches of the world the Gospel reading was from the fourteenth chapter of John, in which Jesus says of himself:
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.”
GOOD STUFF.