The late pope was also active as emeritus

The resignation of Benedict XVI. from the papal office is still a mystery today and is without precedent. This is especially true for the time after that. There has never been a Pope Emeritus of his own free will for such a long time. Celestine V, cited as a reference, only lived as a hermit for around 17 months after his retreat in 1294.

Benedikt, on the other hand, bore the title “Papa emeritus” for almost ten years, reminiscent of a retired university teacher. He did not spend his life in the Vatican monastery Mater Ecclesiae in the quiet of a hermit. He wrote, gave interviews, had visits and photographs taken. Hadn’t he promised a retreat into silence?

Things are not that simple. If you listen carefully to what Benedikt said at the beginning of 2013, then he left a communicative back door open. In announcing his resignation on February 10, he promised “a life of prayer”. It does not follow immediately from this that he will pray exclusively and not express himself otherwise.

Many visits to the Vatican Monastery

He formulated it similarly in the last Roman general audience on February 27th and after his arrival in Castel Gandolfo on February 28th. He does not return to private life, “to a life of travel, encounters, receptions, lectures, etc.”, but dwells “in the service of prayer, so to speak, in the narrower sphere of St. Peter”. It sounded clearer in the last meeting with the clergy of the diocese of Rome: he now remains “hidden from the world”.

In fact, however, the world found numerous ways to seek out the former pontiff and bring back photos from there. Depictions showing the seated Ratzinger, wearing sandals instead of the previously usual red shoes and a white cassock that was actually reserved for popes, were flanked by changing guests.

This gave the iconographically erroneous impression that there were two popes, one in office and one seated, both inviting audiences. The fact that Ratzinger wanted to be addressed as “Father Benedict” did not change this fallacy, which he encouraged with such photographs. He signed letters and cards “Benedict XVI” in his familiar tiny handwriting.

In addition to bishops, priests and companions, his biographer Peter Seewald also visited an increasingly frail Ratzinger. This became the book “Last Conversations”, which was published in 2016. Whether the emeritus was doing himself a favor was controversial, especially among Ratzingerians. Wasn’t that the way he turned to the subjective, which he accused of a church that after the Second Vatican Council had become almost self-referential and chattering? Wouldn’t it have been better, and in line with his own theological view of the papal office, to take a back seat as a person?

Did Benedict come down from the cross?

From this perspective, resignation was already an act in the gray area of ​​Catholic beliefs. Ratzinger explained to the new cardinals in detail in November 2010 why the “true place of Christ’s representative” is the cross, “permanence in obedience to the cross”, not descending.

From a journalistic point of view, such questions were ideal for final talks. And “Father Benedict” urged self-disclosure. He wanted to explain himself. So the world found out about the “lack of physical strength” of a “poor little person” who had already made the decision to resign in the summer of 2012. A pope is not superhuman, but must also be able to meet the demands of the office both physically and mentally. He, Ratzinger, had not “descended from the cross.” Rather, he wanted to “remain connected to the suffering Lord” in prayer.

He also explained that “certain people in Germany” had “always tried to shoot me down”. There is an “overhang” of money and bureaucracy in the church in his home country and a lot of “malice in German intellectual circles”. This lawsuit is reminiscent of the famous phrase of “ready hostility” among Catholics in a March 2009 letter to Catholic bishops.

At that time, Benedict had tried to explain why he had lifted the excommunication of the four bishops of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius. He didn’t know that Richard Williamson, who was later expelled from the Brotherhood himself, was a Holocaust denier. But as it was, “the quiet gesture of mercy” appeared contrary to all intentions as a “rejection of Christian-Jewish reconciliation”. In the volume of the conversation with Seewald, the Williamson case appears as “part of a huge propaganda battle”: “The people who were against me finally had the means to say he was unfit and in the wrong place.”

Ratzinger and Bergoglio separate theological worlds

This is how someone speaks who feels hurt and does not want to leave it at that. In fact, it was absurd to accuse the convinced theologian of the “one covenant” of Jews and Christians with anti-Jewish resentments. At the same time, what is called in Bavaria “Nachtarocken” of past quarrels is hardly paternal, let alone papal.

The situation was different with the scholarly discussions on the nature of the priest, which the emeritus published in early 2020. He entered familiar territory and still caused trouble. The suspicion of an open dissent with his successor Francis seemed to be confirmed.

It is evident that Ratzinger and Bergoglio, the occidental Platonist and the South American Jesuit, look at the Catholic world from different poles. What the traditions of the Church Fathers mean to one, contemporary improvisation is to the other. Benedict made his contribution on the priestly ministry available to a book by conservative Cardinal Robert Sarah, From the Deep of the Heart—Priesthood, Celibacy, and the Crisis of the Catholic Church.

Since he was initially incorrectly named as a co-author on the cover and in the closing words, he saw himself as jointly liable for Sarah’s fight against “diabolical lies and fashionable errors that want to devalue priestly celibacy”. Ratzinger himself had rather dryly referred to biblical derivations of priestly celibacy.

The abuse report and an oversight

The child, of course, had fallen into the well. The book was perceived as a gauntlet addressed to Francis, who also discussed the connection between consecration and celibacy at the Amazon synod he convened in October 2019. However, Bergoglio has not yet attempted to change current practice.

Benedict and those around him once again behaved insufficiently in terms of communication when, at the beginning of this year, the abuse report by a law firm commissioned by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising also shed light on Ratzinger’s time as cardinal. Between 1978 and 1982 there were five “(suspected) cases of abuse” in which the archbishop at the time “did not react in accordance with the rules or appropriately”.

On February 6th, “Benedictus XVI. / Papa emeritus» an open letter. The 82-page statement left to the law firm was written by friends, four legal employees who made an “accident”. Contrary to what is shown there, in 1980 he did take part in the meeting of the episcopal ordinariate, at which the use of a pedophile priest from the diocese of Essen was discussed.

However, no decision was made and he knew nothing about the sexual abuse by said priest. In general, according to Benedict, the church has “excessively guilty” on itself. He regrets every case and sincerely apologizes.

Last talks followed last pictures. They are from the beginning of December and show the familiar figure, even smaller, even weaker, even more waxy, in the familiar robe, white cassock, dark brown sandals. A Jewish scholar and a Jesuit frame an old man who has been Emeritus longer than Pope. His academic career began with the habilitation thesis of a 28-year-old, back then in Munich. It was about the last things and the end of history.