Special Report: The Loneliness of the Short Distance Pope
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Disappointment
Long before he became a bishop, Joseph Ratzinger was a towering theologian, a university professor known around the Catholic world for his dozens of books and ground-breaking, thought-provoking lectures.
As a young priest he was an “expert” called to assist cardinals at the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, which attempted to bring the Church into the modern world with liturgical changes and outreach to other religions.
“For experts, Ratzinger was a pioneer in a movement known as ‘ressourcement’, trying to return Catholicism to its original sources such as the Bible, the Fathers of the Church, and its liturgy,” said John Allen, author of several books on Benedict.
Benedict continued in the professor mould as bishop, cardinal and even when he became pope. This was painfully clear in 2006 when he delivered a weighty lecture on “faith and reason” at the University of Regensburg in Germany, where he once taught theology.
Benedict quoted a remark by a Byzantine emperor who linked Islam and violence, offending Muslims around the world. He apologized but still seemed surprised at the power his words carried.
One Vatican official, speaking privately, speculated that the conclave to elect Benedict’s successor may discuss whether the new pope should promise not to write “private books” but only papal documents.
In his abdication statement, Benedict concluded that it had become impossible for him to continue being pope “in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith”.
Many inside and outside the Vatican wonder why he did not put better governance in place in the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration, to help ease the load on his mind and body.
Critics, such as leading Italian Vatican expert and author Sandro Magister, say the pope put people in positions of administrative power because he knew them and felt comfortable with them rather than for their abilities.
One Vatican official said he believed the Curia “let the pope down” by not preventing problems. In particular, some Vatican insiders criticize Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Benedict’s number two.
“Bertone will probably be remembered as one of the worst secretaries of state in history,” said another official.
In confidential cables from the U.S. embassy to the Vatican published by WikiLeaks in 2010, diplomats depicted Bertone as a divisive “yes man” with no diplomatic experience or linguistic skills, who protected the pope from bad news.
At the time, Bertone replied: “I am happy to be a ‘yes man’ if it serves the Holy Father.”
A number of Vatican officials privately say that instead of abdicating and throwing the Church into the unknown, the pope could have cut back on travel and other activities to conserve his strength, limiting himself to major decisions and pronouncements, and delegating more.
“It is easy to understand why an 85-year-old man in difficult conditions may feel terribly tired. But the pope does not need to be a hands-on chief executive if he puts in place a good team, which he could have done at any moment because he is a sovereign,” a Vatican source said.
“He could content himself with doing very little except praying … but because the people he had in place were not adequate, instead of removing them, he removed himself,” the source said, adding that he would have tried to talk him out of it.
Many Catholic faithful, from elderly women praying in the pews in New York, to monsignors who work in the frescoed offices on the floor below the papal apartments, share that sense of disquiet and loss.
“The fundamental idea that the papacy does not end until the death of a pope has been eroded. It will take 100 years of popes never retiring for this to become a blip,” one Vatican source said.
Edited by Simon Robinson and Sara Ledwith.
© 2013 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.
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