Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who died on Saturday will be laid out in St. Peter’s Basilica from Monday. The abdication ceremonies will take place on January 5th in St. Peter’s Square. A new era begins in the Vatican.
Pope Francis (right) and his late predecessor Pope Benedict XVI. in 2016.
“It is with great pain that I have to announce that Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus, passed away today at 9.34 a.m. in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican.” With these words Matteo Bruni, Vatican communications director, announced on Saturday, the last day of 2022, the death of Joseph Ratzinger, who resigned as Pope ten years ago. Ratzinger, known as Benedict XVI from 2005 to 2013. who was the head of the Catholic Church, received the Anointing of the Sick last Wednesday, Bruni said.
Abdication celebrations on January 5th
Ever since Pope Francis called on the faithful to pray for Benedict during the general audience last Wednesday, it was known that things were bad for the pope emeritus. The health of the 95-year-old from Marktl am Inn in Upper Bavaria had deteriorated “due to advancing age”, the Vatican said.
As Matteo Bruni further announced on Saturday, the abdication ceremonies led by Pope Francis will take place next January 5 in St. Peter’s Square. According to the wishes of the deceased, they should be “solemn but sober”. From next Monday, Benedict XVI. laid out in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni praised Benedict as a “giant of faith and reason”. President Sergio Mattarella emphasized his qualities as a theologian and intellectual, who performed his role with great sensitivity. The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the other hand, spoke of an extraordinary figure in the Catholic Church.
Difficult coexistence
With the death of Ratzinger, a new era begins in the Vatican. Francis is the sole pope for the first time. The fact that the incumbent pope had a pope emeritus at his side for ten years was quite unusual in the history of the Catholic Church.
However, the constellation led to tensions in the system. Some observers spoke of Ratzinger as a “shadow pope” and that he was still active in the background and was pursuing his own conservative church politics. Benedict himself had always dismissed such speculation. There is only one pope, and that is the incumbent, he said in an interview with the “Corriere della Sera” in spring 2021.
Initially, the coexistence of the two popes turned out to be largely harmonious. The encounters between the two were particularly cordial, Benedict seemed to be something like the theological-intellectual companion of Francis, who for his part was considered more of a pastor and practical man.
But the longer the coexistence lasted, Benedict was made the counterweight or even antipode of the incumbent pontiff – possibly against the will of the two protagonists involved. The Monastero Mater Ecclesiae, where Benedict lived in seclusion with his private secretary Georg Gänswein and four sisters, was turned into a shadow and a projection screen, as Massimo Franco, one of the great experts on the Vatican power structures, wrote in a book.
Some observers suspected that Benedict and Francis had been used by the various factions in the Vatican for their respective purposes. Benedict was stylized as a brakeman, while Francis was made into an incumbent caught up in intrigues and largely incapable of acting.
Francis’ early resignation?
With the death of his predecessor, Francis is the sole pope for the first time. How he deals with it is open. Quite a few connoisseurs suspect that the death of Ratzinger will shorten Francis’ own stay in office. The incumbent Pope is in poor health and has recently indicated that he himself is not averse to an early resignation. But as long as Benedict was still alive, that would have been out of the question: two popes emeritus would have been too much of a good thing.