Special Report: The Loneliness of the Short Distance Pope
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Peter Seewald, a German journalist who wrote a book with the pope in 2010 in which Benedict first publicly floated the possibility of resigning, visited him at the end of 2012 while working on a new biography.
“His hearing had worsened. He couldn’t see with his left eye. His body had become so thin that the tailors had difficulty keeping up with newly fitted clothes … I’d never seen him so exhausted-looking, so worn down,” Seewald wrote in the German magazine Focus after Benedict announced his abdication.
“I think he simply decided that the forces that were mounting against him were too great and the forces on which he could rely were too meager to counter this,” said the Vatican official who knows him well.
Private and Isolated
Towards the end of last year came a hint that 2013 would be different. The Vatican usually gives journalists an unofficial indication of how many international trips the pope plans in the following year.
Last year the only trip confirmed was to Brazil in July, for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Youth, a kind of “Catholic Woodstock” that can take place with or without the pope.
Benedict had already decided that he would not be there. The only thing left to do was announce his momentous news to his aides and to the world.
In September the pope travelled to Lebanon and in November, with much fanfare, Benedict joined Twitter, attracting more than 1.5 million followers in just a few days. Christmas, New Year and Epiphany came and went with all the pomp and pageantry that only an institution like the Vatican can offer.
Benedict, a stickler for liturgical precision, did not want the Church to be devoid of a visible leader for any of its most important feasts, insiders say. He timed his announcement for a liturgical lull, so a new man could be in place before the start of Holy Week on Palm Sunday, which falls on March 24 this year.
He broke the news to cardinals just after 11:30 a.m. on February 11. It was a regularly scheduled meeting to announce new saints, and most cardinals’ minds were probably wandering, according to several who were there.
“People were thinking of their next appointments, at least I was,” said one participant.
Then Benedict dropped the bombshell.
“Both strength of mind and body are necessary (to run the Church), strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me,” he told them in Latin.
Benedict had written the 350-word statement himself and before reading it sent it to a Latin expert in the Secretariat of State to make sure the grammar was correct, according to a source familiar with the event.
He read his note in a steady voice with no outward sign of emotion.
“For a few minutes after we understood what had happened, no one moved,” said one cardinal. Another said: “I just left in a daze without uttering a word to anyone.”
Although the official line is that the pope was “courageous” in making his decision, in private conversations officials repeat two words more than any others to describe Benedict, and how he came to the decision: private, and isolated.
One Vatican official who “respects but disagrees with” Benedict’s decision said the pope had become isolated but had also isolated himself.
“Because of his privacy, he was not an easy person to help,” the official said. “This was his decision.”
Several insiders said they believed part of the decision lay in the fact that the pope never made the full transfiguration from Joseph Ratzinger to Benedict XVI.
“I don’t think that he ever really internalized being the pope. He never made that transition where the previous person, that individual, is gone and now you are the pope, that’s all you are,” one official said.
One sign of this, two Vatican sources noted, was that Benedict continued writing his books using two names: first, Joseph Ratzinger and beneath, Pope Benedict XVI.
“The pope cannot publish private books … the pope does not have a private person,” one official said. “Maybe because he was already too advanced in age, maybe because Joseph Ratzinger was already too substantial a person.”
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