Pope emeritus Benedict XVI dies at age 95

Benedict XVI, who led the Roman Catholic Church through a period of transformation, controversy and scandal before becoming the first pope in 600 years to resign, has died.

The pope emeritus is 95.

Benedict had been expected to make his papacy largely about affirming traditional conservative Roman Catholic doctrine but ended up spending a lot on dealing with the church’s sexual abuse scandal.

At the age of 78, Benedict was elected pope in April 2005, so his tenure must be considered short, relative to his predecessors.

Known more for his teachings than his charisma

He is the oldest cardinal to serve as pope since Clement XII in 1730 and is considered by many to be a “transitional” leader.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a Catholic scholar known more for his strict theological teachings than his charisma, was an unexpected choice. Some consider him too polarized and radical compared to his populist predecessor, John Paul II.

Benedict made history when, on February 28, 2013, he became the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign.

Pope Gregory XII, in 1415, was the last pope to resign while in office.

Benedict cited his age – he is 85 – and his failing health as reasons for his resignation. By the end of 2022, those who had seen Benedict said that his body was very weak but his mind was still sharp. However, Italian news reports said he suffered respiratory problems over Christmas.

His decision to step down after holding the papacy for less than eight years shocked Catholics around the world and even some of his closest advisers.

Many expected the papacy to be characterized by a strict conservative interpretation of Roman Catholic doctrine.

While he certainly used his time as pope to support the vision of a “purer” Catholic Church and to denounce the “dictatorship of relativism” that he saw as permeating modern secular society and infiltrating parts of the church, he held what would be considered a liberal position. many social problems.

He opposed the death penalty and the war in Iraq; advocate for the poor and disenfranchised; including excessive wealth and environmental pollution among the seven modern sins introduced in 2008; and denounced the blind pursuit of economic benefits for their own good.

But in the end, these aspects of the papacy were largely overshadowed by the breadth of sexual abuse scandals involving Catholic clergy.

Abuses from the past

One of Benedict’s first acts as pope was to remove Marcial Maciel Degollado, a known pedophile and philanderer, from active ministry. The leader of the Legion of Christ, a secret Catholic order Degollado founded in Mexico, has been sexually abusing young seminarians for decades and fathering children by different women.

But before Benedict, Degollado was never approved by the church.

Allegations that the church had turned a blind eye to sexual abuse by clergy were cut closer in 2010, when details emerged that a priest from Essen, accused of abusing minors, was transferred to Ratzinger’s Archdiocese for “therapy” in 1980, when Ratzinger became . archbishop of Munich.

Peter Hullermann was given pastoral duties in the Archdiocese and continued to abuse minors for several years, although he was convicted of the offense in 1986.

Although Ratzinger’s vicar general in the diocese of Munich, Gerhard Gruber, took full responsibility for Hullermann’s transfer there and claimed that Ratzinger was unaware of all the personnel problems in the archdiocese, many found it difficult to believe that he could have remained ignorant of the case.

Scandal – even after an apology

Hullermann’s case is just one of hundreds of abuse allegations that have surfaced during Benedict’s pontificate, including at least 300 in Germany.

The Pope could not shake the scandal, although he wrote an official letter of apology to the victims of abuse in Ireland, where the Catholic Church has been shaken by the revelation that the bishops, often in collusion with the state and the police, covered up the abuse and made children sign secret agreements protecting the abusers .

Benedict appointed a group of prelates to investigate Irish dioceses and seminaries in May 2010. He also became the first pope to hold an official summit on the topic of sexual abuse in the church, bringing together bishops from 100 countries and leaders of 33 religious orders. four-day conference at the Vatican in February 2012.

Then in January 2022, an independent report commissioned by the German church found he had failed to act in four cases of sexual abuse while he was Archbishop of Munich, between 1977 and 1982.

Benedict later apologized for his handling of the case, but pleaded not guilty.

Benedict’s rule was also marred by a number of personal weaknesses and controversies, which sometimes had to be corrected.

In 2006, for example, he angered Muslims around the world when he chose to quote a 14th-century Byzantine emperor’s disparaging remarks about Islam during a theological lecture at the University of Regensburg in Bavaria.

He tried to bridge the gap three months later by visiting Istanbul’s Blue Mosque, becoming only the second pope in history to enter a Muslim house of worship.

In 2009, he condemned for reversing the excommunication of a schismatic bishop from the ultraconservative Congregation of St. Pius X, some objected to certain aspects of the Holocaust.

He also raised eyebrows when he created a special division of the Catholic Church for Anglican bishops who withdrew from the Church of England over issues such as the ordination of female bishops.

Liberal view

Although generally weak on issues such as homosexuality, the ordination of women priests and contraception, Benedict surprised many in November 2010 when he told reporters that there were some cases where the use of condoms could be justified.

When speaking, for example, against the war in Iraq or excessive consumption, he saw the alignment of social conscience with individual morality as integral to Catholic teaching and as the only way to reduce human suffering and bring the world out of morality. turpitude.

“It is the responsibility of the church to teach conscience, to teach moral responsibility and to unmask evil, to unmask this idol of money, which empowers people,” he told the media traveling with him during the March 2012 papal visit to Mexico, where he spoke strongly to the country’s deadly drug war.

He advocated against the direct involvement of clerics in politics, whether in Latin America or elsewhere.

“The mission of the church is not political in nature,” he said in a visit to the West African country of Benin. “Christ did not propose a social or political revolution.”

However, Benedict focused on the idea of ​​charity – rather than the more political idea of ​​social justice – as “the heart of the church’s social doctrine” and called on Christians who do charity work to “not be inspired by ideologies aimed at improving the world, but by “relationship who lives with Christ” and love for others inspired.

The seminary years

An accomplished pianist who spoke several languages, Ratzinger was born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, a small town in Bavaria, a predominantly Catholic region of southern Germany.

His father, a policeman also named Joseph, came from an old Bavarian farming family of modest means. He took an anti-Nazi stance after Adolf Hitler came to power, and the family moved several times before settling in a village outside the town of Traunstein in 1937.

Ratzinger entered the seminary in Traunstein in 1939 and in 1943 was drafted along with the rest of the class into a military anti-aircraft unit.

In his early teens, he became a member of the Hitler Youth, which was mandatory for all German children at the time, although according to senior National Catholic Reporter John L. Allen Jr., who has written two books about Benedict, he was an unenthusiastic member and regularly skipped meetings. .

Ratzinger insisted that he never fired a shot while in the military and in 1945, he deserted and returned to Traunstein, where he was held briefly in an American prisoner of war camp.

After the war, he re-entered the seminary and was ordained a priest in 1951. Shortly thereafter, he received a doctorate in theology from Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich.

At the end of the decade, he lectured as a full professor of theology at the University of Bonn.

A conservative theologian

He then moved to the University of Muenster, and in the late 1960s, became the chair of dogmatic theology at the University of Tuebingen.

But he grew irritated by the 60s liberalism and radicalism of Tuebingen’s student body and moved to the more conservative University of Regensburg, where he became dean and spent time advising German bishops on theological issues.

In 1977, Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of Munich, one of the largest dioceses in the world, and three months later, made him a cardinal.

Ratzinger will be elected dean of the College of Cardinals 25 years later.

Ratzinger continued on a conservative path, becoming prefect of the powerful Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1981 and moving to Rome to become the defender of the “clear faith” of Pope John Paul II, a position he held until the 2005 Conclave.

His zeal for enforcing orthodoxy earned Ratzinger several labels over the years.

‘Cardinal no’

He was called, variously, “the Hammer,” “Cardinal No” and “God’s Rottweiler.”

But some also say he has a warm “pastoral” side that doesn’t always come across in media coverage. What is lacking in the kind of theatrical flourishes that made John Paul so popular, he made up for in devotion to pedagogy and eloquence in theological matters.

When describing the appeal of Benedict’s apparently rigid and stern, Allen famously told Time magazine that while people may come to “see” John Paul, they come to “hear” Benedict. With his death, the voice of Pope Benedict may be gone, but the theologian Benedict will certainly live on through the many scholarly works he composed during his career and papacy.