Papa Benedict sat and preached with the faithful: a report on abuse in the early 1980’s by Matteo Bruni
Francis said that Benedict was sick at the end of his audience and asked the faithful to pray for him.
Matteo Bruni said Pope Francis went to see his predecessor Benedict in the monastery that is on Vatican grounds, after asking the faithful to pray for him.
Benedict, who was the first pontiff to resign in 600 years, has become increasingly frail in recent years as he dedicated his post-papacy life to prayer and meditation.
Benedict wrote in a rare public letter in the Italian newspaper that he was on a pilgrimage toward home as his physical strength waned.
According to the report, there were four cases of sexual abuse involving minor victims but he failed to act in two of them. It was learned Benedict had attended a meeting with an abuser named Priest X. Benedict brushed off accusations that he knew in 1980 that this priest was an abusive one.
According to the report, he attended a meeting where an abusive priest was discussed, but failed to act on four other cases of sexual abuse involving children.
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Francis invited Benedict to the monastery four months ago. The new “princes of the church” were present for the ceremony where churchmen were elevated to cardinal rank.
The photo released by the Vatican showed Benedict and Francis smiling at each other, and Benedict was very thin looking.
Benedict attended a couple of official ceremonies in St. Peter’s Basilica after he retired. He wasn’t strong enough to attend the long service in the past.
The Vatican reported that Pope Benedict XII islucid and vigilant, but his condition remains serious.
Born Joseph Ratzinger in Germany in 1927, he was ordained as a priest in 1951, made a cardinal in 1977, and later served as chief theological adviser to Pope John Paul II. He was elected as the 265th pope in April 2005, following John Paul II’s death.
Many people would have mixed feelings about Benedict, according to a statement by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. A lot of clergy abuse victims aren’t out of the woods in terms of healing from their wounds and getting the justice they deserve.
Benedict’s situation is stable despite his grave condition, according to Bruni.
Responding to that call, the diocese of Rome scheduled a special Mass in honor of Benedict on Friday at St. John Lateran, Benedict’s former basilica in his capacity as the bishop of Rome.
Word of Benedict’s declining health immediately posed questions about what would happen when he dies, given the unprecedented reality of having a reigning pope presumably presiding over the funeral of a former pope.
For any retired bishop of Rome, the funeral is likely to be similar, though with the caveat that there would be official delegations to honor a former head of state and pilgrims from Germany.
While St. Peter’s Square was mostly filled with visitors from abroad on Thursday — during peak Christmas tourist season — some Italians were out to pay their respects or at least offer a prayer.
Giorgio said that they had come here to make their small contribution and that the situation was bad but they were close to Pope Ratzinger.
The Vatican newspaper L’ Osservatore Romano wrote about Benedict’s health in its Thursday editions, but life in the small city state that Benedict and Pope Francis call home went on.
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Francis had a seemingly routine day of audiences Thursday, meeting with his ambassador to Madagascar, the commander of the Swiss Guards and a fellow Jesuit.
People standing in a line waiting to get into St. Peter’s Basilica take selfies in front of a life-sized Christmas tree in the square.
While small groups of nuns hurried across the cobblestones and tour guides held flags with them nearby souvenir sellers hawked Vatican magnets and rosaries.
“We hadn’t heard anything yet,” said Liam Marchesano who was waiting to see the basilica with his girlfriend. “Maybe that’s why there’s such a long line.”
For his nearly eight years as pope, Benedict is remembered as one of the most conservative pontiffs in recent memory and a church leader who, by choosing to retire, charted a new course for the papacy.
Still, conservative Catholics tried to draw Benedict out, or at least use him as counterweight to the more liberal papacy of Francis. Some Catholics looked to him as an anti-Pope, or at least an anti-Francis.
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Ratzinger entered a seminary when he was 12. He joined the Hitler Youth at the peak of World War II, and was required to do so. He served in an anti-aircraft battalion in 1943 after he was drafted.
From 1981 to 2005, Ratzinger ran the Vatican’s influential Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the office responsible for stating and policing church doctrine. He was, in effect, Catholicism’s chief theologian during this time, said Gibson, Benedict’s biographer.
His influence was certainly felt in the United States. In 1984, Ratzinger told the Order of Preachers, also known as the Dominicans, to investigate one of its monks, Matthew Fox, for heresy. Fox was expelled from the order by the Vatican.
In 1999, Ratzinger effectively silenced an American nun and priest engaged in LGBTQ ministry because they would not affirm the “Church’s teaching regarding the intrinsic evil of homosexual acts.” The nun and priest were “permanently prohibited from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons.”
But Ratzinger eventually tired of the job, reportedly asking Pope John Paul II to appoint him as a librarian at the Vatican’s library. John Paul was unwilling to comply.
Ratzinger said he quickly realized that he was going to become the new Pope, though he was reluctant to assume the mantle of St. Peter.
Upon his election, Ratzinger took the name Benedict XVI as a nod to church history, he said. He chose the name to honor Benedict XV, who pursued peace during World War I, and the original St. Benedict, a monk “whose life evokes the Christian roots of Europe,” Ratzinger said.
“In a world which he considered relativist and secular, his main thrust was to re-establish a sense of Catholic identity for Catholics themselves,” said Delia Gallagher, CNN’s Vatican correspondent.
His remarks were sharply criticized by heads of states in the Middle East and Muslim groups throughout the world. Effigies of Benedict were burnt in Basra, Iraq, and elsewhere in predominantly Muslim countries.
Benedict wrote a letter in April of 2019, in which he claimed that the sex abuse crisis was caused by the sixties sexual revolution and the liberalization of church teachings.
In 2002, he asked Pope John Paul II to route all accusations of sexual abuse to his office, where he instituted changes meant to deal swiftly with accused priests. The church says that from 2004 to 2014, there were 848 priests defrocked for raping or molesting children. During that time, his office had received 3,400 accusations, according to the church.
In some cases, Benedict acted swiftly, as when he removed Marcial Maciel, a powerful Mexican priest who founded the conservative Legion of Christ, after years of allegations that he had sexually abused children.
Pope Benedict’s record has been abysmal, and I do not want him to be remembered as someone who did the right thing.
Also in 2010, the Times reported that the future pope – while serving as the archbishop in Munich – had been copied on a memo informing him that a priest accused of molesting children was being returned to pastoral work. The spokesman for the archdiocese said that it was extremely unlikely that Ratzinger had read any of the memos.
The outgoing pope made a promise in his farewell address to stay hidden, but he continued to speak out on religious matters, causing tensions within the Catholic Church in the years after his retirement.
Anthony Hopkins received an Oscar nomination for portraying Benedict in ” The Two Popes,” a film about the contrast between the two men.
The Reverend Joseph Fessio studied with Benedict and he said the former Pope probably knew that conservatives were going to pit him against Francis.
“My thoughts are with the Catholics of France and the world, mourning the departure of His Holiness Benedict XVI, who worked with soul and intelligence for a more fraternal world,” Macron tweeted.
Maltese Prime Minister Robert Alpinia sent his sympathies to the Holy See on behalf of the Maltese government.
“With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican,” the Director of the Press Office of the Holy See, Matteo Bruni said.
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The name “Cardinal No” became synonymous with the efforts of Ratzinger to crack down on the liberation theology movement, religious pluralism and calls to ordain women as priests.
Benedict was forced to distance himself from a book that was seen as being undercutting Francis in deciding if or not to allow married men to become priests. The book, “From the Depths of Our Hearts,” argued in favor of the centuries-old tradition of priestly celibacy within the Catholic Church. Benedict was originally listed as co-author, but later clarified that he had only contributed one section of the text.
Benedict XVI announced in February that he was no longer suited for an appropriate exercise of the Petrine ministry because of his advanced age.
O’Connell said, “Here is a man who in prayer realized his limits and resigned, because he did not have the strength to go further, as he explained in that interview book.” In his own words. “He had a sense of peace that he had made the right decision.”
He offended Jews by lifting the excommunication of a bishop who denied the Holocaust, was reprimanded by European politicians for saying condoms help spread AIDS, and had power struggles in the Vatican that caused clerical sex abuse scandals.
He was 6 years old when Hitler took power. His parents — a police officer and a hotel cook — were firm Catholics who opposed the Nazi regime, according to historian Michael Frassetto.
He was called to Rome by Pope John Paul II to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, the Vatican’s theological watchdog. He held the post for 24 years. During that time, one of his most controversial documents was “Dominus Jesus,” which emphasized the primacy of the Catholic Church and branded non-Christian religions as “gravely deficient” — potentially undermining Vatican II achievements toward dialogue between Catholicism and other denominations and religions.
On occasion, Benedict backed down. In 2008, his reinstatement of the traditional Latin Mass, with its Good Friday prayer calling for the conversion of Jews, drew strong criticism from Jewish leaders, forcing the Vatican to change the prayer’s wording.
A few months later, Jewish-Catholic relations were again jeopardized after Benedict lifted the excommunication of a renegade bishop, Richard Williamson, who had publicly cast doubt about the Holocaust. Benedict apologized to his bishops in a letter that he wrote after worldwide outrage. He said that he didn’t have prior knowledge that the bishop was a Holocaust denier. The pope said he was more interested in the internet for information.
Nevertheless, Benedict again triggered widespread anger when he announced he was putting the World War II-era pope on the track to sainthood for what Benedict called his “heroic virtues.” Pope Pius XII is widely viewed as not having spoken out forcefully as the Holocaust was being carried out. The sainthood process is still underway.
The historian said that the real legacy of Benedict was how he ended his papacy. “Benedict XVI’s decision to resign was a very radical interpretation of Vatican II,” Faggioli said. That was revolutionary beyond the Vatican II letter.
Even though the pope had to do something about the reforms of his successor, he never commented or appeared in public.