"What strikes you about Benedict XVI is his coherence, his wisdom and his serenity, also with the clear awareness [he has] of the problems that the Church and humanity debates."

The words of Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, writing in today’s edition of the Italian daily, Il Messaggero, on the 7th anniversary of the Holy Father’s election as Pope.

“Perhaps for this reason,” the Pope’s deputy continued, “his teaching doesn’t leave anyone indifferent.” In Benedict XVI, he added, “is found coherence and wisdom, also in the clear indications he gives to the world about the essential value of religious liberty, in the reception of people of every culture and religion, in the particular attention he pays to the needs of the family, in the attention he gives to youth, to whom he has been a true teacher of life and educator of the faith.”

The 77 year-old Italian cardinal added that in these days of economic crisis, large movements of people, the “bursting of dormant demands for freedom and justice”, here is a man with a “high intellectual and doctrinal profile” who "is an educator and an exceptional teacher” particularly for the "young generations."

Cardinal Bertone then reflected on how it is to work with Pope Benedict.

“Because of my service as Secretary of State, I have a way of assiduously dealing with the questions of the Church with Benedict XVI,” he said. His working meetings with the Pope, he added, “are not routine and rigid, but suffused with an atmosphere of fraternity and also imaginativeness.”

“I therefore wish to emphasize the ability of Ratzinger the man to create friends and cordiality,” the cardinal continued. “It really is wrong to see the Pope as focused solely on books, distant from the real problems of people,” he said. “In truth he is able to get to the very heart of problems.”

The Vatican Secretary of State concluded by saying that Benedict XVI is leading the Church and confronting all the issues of major concern in the world, above all “the crisis of values.”

“Thank you Holy Father,” Cardinal Bertone said, “for your untiring ministry, for your meekness and serenity. Ad multos annos!”

To mark the seventh anniversary of the election of the Holy Father, the Vatican announced today that webmasters and bloggers can now install a widget on their websites which provides access to the homilies, messages and news of the Pope.

Available on the Vatican’s website, www.vatican.va, under the “Focus” section, the Vatican says that through this new interface “it will be possible, automatically and dynamically, to transfer some of the most important content contained in the institutional website www.vatican.va to another user's website.”

It adds: “The Pontifical Magisterium is thus enriched with another means of communication, making the content of the institutional website more widely known, and using all the opportunities technology offers in order to spread the word of the Holy Father.”

In particular, it says that through using the new widget, “it will be possible to export all the principal novelties, the Sunday Angelus, Audiences and the Bulletin of the Holy See Press Office.”

Users need to click on “Widget Vatican Va” and then send an email request to obtain the code which can then be inserted on the own homepage of their own websites.