A Pope Francis response to his resignation note to the Vatican No. 2 secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone in the wake of his 2013 visit to Mexico
ROME — Pope Francis has revealed in an interview published Sunday that shortly after being elected pontiff in 2013 he wrote a resignation letter in case medical problems impede him from carrying out his duties.
Speaking to the Spanish newspaper ABC, Francis said he gave the note to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who then was the Vatican secretary of state. The pontiff added that he presumes that the prelate currently in that Vatican No. 2 role, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, now has the written instruction.
Francis, who was born on Saturday, has had surgery in the past to fix a narrowing of his bowels and has been in a wheelchair for months because of knee pain. Lately, he has increasingly used a cane instead of the wheelchair to get around in public.
Asked what happens if health issues or an accident suddenly leaves a pope unable to do his job, and whether there should be a rule for such instances, Francis replied, “In practice there is already a rule.”
The pontiff quipped that now that he has revealed the existence of his resignation note, “someone will run up to Bertone (saying), ‘Give me that piece of paper.'”
Benedict stunned the Catholic faithful and religious experts around the world on February 11, 2013, when he announced plans to step down from his position as Pope, citing his “advanced age.”
“Regarding the health conditions of the emeritus pope, for whom Pope Francis asked for prayers at the end of his general audience this morning, I can confirm that in the last hours, a worsening due to advanced age has happened,” Bruni said in a written statement.
“The situation at the moment remains under control and continually monitored by his doctors,” the spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said, adding that Francis visited his predecessor at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in Vatican City after his general audience.
Gerard O’Connell, Vatican correspondent for the Jesuit magazine America, said it was after a fall during his visit to Mexico in 2012 that Benedict understood he could no longer fulfill his papal duties.
The report found that while in the post he had been informed of four cases of sexual abuse involving minors – including two that had occurred during his time in office – but failed to act. It was also revealed that Benedict had been present at a meeting about an abusive person. Following the report’s publication, Benedict pushed back against accusations that he knew in 1980 that this priest was an abuser.
The report found that he had been informed of four cases of sexual abuse involving minors – including two during his time in Munich – but failed to act, and that he had attended a meeting about an abusive priest.
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Benedict attended some ceremonies in St. Peter’s Basilica during his first years of retirement. But in recent years, he wasn’t strong enough to attend the long service.
Four months ago, Francis invited Benedict to the monastery. The occasion was Francis’ latest ceremony elevating churchmen to cardinal rank, and the new “princes of the church” accompanied him for the brief greeting.
The Vatican released a photo at the time that showed a very thin-looking Benedict clasping a hand of Francis as they current and past pontiff smiled at each other.
The Vatican press office director Matteo Bruni said that the situation at the moment is stable, despite his serious condition.
Born Joseph Ratzinger in Germany in 1927, he was the son of a policeman. He was made a cardinal in 1977 and later served as chief theological adviser to Pope John Paul II.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said that many people had mixed feelings about the life of Benedict. Many clergy abuse victims don’t have the healing they need to get justice, according to the group.
Bruni said Thursday that Benedict “managed to rest well last night, is absolutely lucid and conscious and today, while his condition remains grave, the situation at the moment is stable.”
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.
Pope Francis will preside over the funeral of Benedict, an event that traditionally takes a pope’s passing for a new leader to be chosen.
The funeral of any retired bishop of Rome would be the same, even if there were official delegations to honor a former head of state, aswell as pilgrims from Germany, according to most Vatican experts.
Some Italians were out to pray or pay respects on Thursday when St. Peter’s Square was mostly filled with visitors from abroad.
“Obviously it is a bad situation, we are all close to Pope Ratzinger, we are sad, so we came here to make our small contribution,” said one pilgrim, Giorgio Gibin.
L’Osservatore Romano focused on Benedict’s health in its Thursday edition, but life went on as usual in the city that Benedict and Pope Francis call home.
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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.
In the square, tourists waiting to get into the basilica are mostly wrapped around the piazza, in front of a Nativity scene and Christmas tree.
The small groups of nuns and tour guides rushed across the cobblestones, while the nearby souvenir sellers did brisk business hawking pope magnets, rosaries and Francis statues.
“We hadn’t heard the news,” said Liam Marchesano, a 22-year-old economics student from Mantova who was waiting to see the basilica with his girlfriend. I think that is the reason for the long line.
He was known to be more conservative than Pope Francis who has made a number of changes to the Vatican’s positions on homosexuality, abortion, and other issues despite clouding Benedict’s legacy.
Critics say Benedict did not always choose his words wisely. During a speech in Regensburg, Germany in 2006, he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who criticized Islam, calling it violent, “evil and inhuman.”
Joseph Ratzinger was born and raised in Bavaria, where he briefly served in the Hitler Youth, despite his objections, and the German military during World War II. His father, a policeman, loathed the Nazis, according to biographers.
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He took over the head of the Vatican’s Doctrine of Faith in 1981 and is one of his most significant steps up.
His influence was felt in the United States. The Dominicans were told in 1984 that one of their monks, Matthew Fox, needed to be investigated for heresy. Fox was removed from the order by the Vatican in 1993.
An American nun and priest was silenced in 1999 by Ratzinger because they did not agree with the teaching of the church about homosexual acts. The nun and priest were not allowed to work in pastoral settings with 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 refused to listen.
As the conclave to appoint Pope John Paul II’s successor went on, Ratzinger said he quickly realized that he would be elected as the new Pope – though he was reluctant to assume the mantel of St. Peter.
Upon his election, Ratzinger took the name Benedict XVI as a nod to church history, he said. Benedict XV was the original St Benedict, and he pursued peace during World War I.
He was determined to strengthen the Catholic Church’s core beliefs and oppose modern trends he believed were damaging it.
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.
At the peak of the child sex abuse scandals, Benedict became pope, putting the church at risk of losing its moral standing around the world.
In 2002, Pope John Paul II was asked to route accusations of sexual abuse by priests to his office. More than 850 priests who raped or molested children were defrocked and another 2,572 were sanctioned by the Vatican. According to the church, his office had received over 3000 accusations.
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.
“I would hate for him to be remembered as someone who did the right thing because from our perspective, Pope Benedict’s record has been abysmal,” said Blaine, who died in 2017.
In 2010, The New York Times reported that Ratzinger had failed to act in the case of the priest accused of molesting up to 200 boys. The Times reported that church officials stopped proceedings against the priest after he wrote Ratzinger.
During his farewell address, the outgoing pope promised to remain hidden from the world, but he continued to speak out on religious matters, and this contributed to tensions within the Catholic Church.
The film “The Two Popes” dramatized the differences between the two popes, and Anthony Hutchins was nominated for an Oscar for portraying Benedict.
The Rev. Joseph Fessio, an American Jesuit who studied under Benedict and has published his works at Ignatius Press, said the former Pope likely knew that conservatives were trying to pit him against Francis.
The death of Pope Benedict leaves the Roman Catholic Church and its faithful without a spiritual and intellectual leader. We remember him with respect.
Maltese prime minister sent his sympathies to the Holy See on behalf of the Maltese government.
The funeral for Benedict will be held in St Peter’s Square on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. local time. Pope Francis will be leading the funeral. In line with Benedict’s wishes, his funeral will be “simple,” Bruni said.
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Ratzinger became known as “Cardinal No” stemming from his efforts to crack down on the liberation theology movement, religious pluralism, challenges to traditional teachings on issues such as homosexuality, and calls to ordain women as priests.
In January 2020, Benedict was forced to distance himself from a book widely seen as undercutting Francis as he considered whether or not to allow married men to become priests in certain cases. 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.
“Here’s a man in prayer who decided he could go so far, but he knew he wasn’t good enough to go farther, and therefore he resigned,” O’Connell said. In his own words. “He had a sense of peace that he had made the right decision.”
The response, many Vatican watchers say, would taint his legacy as a person, a theologian and as head of the Catholic Church — particularly because he expressed no empathy for the victims.
He was 6 when Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. Michael Frassetto says that his parents were Catholics who opposed the Nazi regime.
Four years later, Pope John Paul II summoned him to Rome to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — the Vatican’s theological watchdog, once known as the Roman Inquisition. He held the post for more than two decades. 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.
But Benedict backed down on occasion. The Vatican was forced to change the wording of its Good Friday prayer after Jewish leaders criticized his reinstatement of the traditional Latin Mass.
Benedict lifted the ex-ordination of a bishop after he voiced doubt about the Holocaust. Following worldwide outrage, Benedict wrote a letter to his bishops acknowledging it was an “unforeseen mishap.” He said he did not have prior knowledge that Williamson was a Holocaust denier despite the bishop’s remarks circulating widely online. The pope believes that he got 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.
Yet the historian said the real legacy of Benedict’s papacy was how he ended it. Faggioli said that the resignation of Benedict XVI was a very ” radical” interpretation of Vatican II. “Going beyond the letter of Vatican II, that was revolutionary.”
O’Connell of America magazine said that in Benedict’s final remarks to the cardinals before leaving the Vatican, he said his successor was among them. The correspondent said that he respected his successor’s commitment to loyalty and obedience in a total, absolute way.
The pope retired while the reforms of his successor was being objected to by the church’s conservatives.
Benedict’s funeral mass is scheduled to take place on Thursday in St. Peter’s Square. He is expected to have his remains displayed in St. Peter’s Basilica for people to farewell him.
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The oldest person to ever be elected as a pontiff was the former pope who was 78 years old. He served for seven years before becoming the first pope to resign in nearly 600 years, citing his advanced age as a reason he was no longer suited to lead.
Pope Francis had praised Benedict’s virtue and his love for the Church and human beings when he spoke at the dedication of a new statue in the Vatican Gardens.
Benedict wrote a general apology to all survivors of sexual abuse, but he did not mention any personal or specific apologies in his letter.
During the testament, which consisted of a letter containing the pope’s final words, Benedict spoke of the “many reasons” he had to be thankful for his life.
The Catholic Church handling of sexual abuse accusations against priests did not come up in his final letter.
The former Pope’s body was moved from the monastery to St. Peter’s Basilica on Monday morning, where it was laid out for the faithful to bid farewell, the Vatican said.
He stunned the Catholic faithful and religious experts around the world in 2013 when he announced plans to step down from his position as Pope, citing his “advanced age.”
His death prompted tributes from political and religious leaders including US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Dalai Lama.
As daylight broke, 10 white-gloved Papal Gentlemen — lay assistants to pontiffs and papal households — carried the body on a cloth-covered wooden stretcher up the center aisle of the mammoth basilica to its resting place in front of the main altar under Bernini’s towering bronze canopy.
After Benedict’s remains were moved from the chapel of the monastery grounds to a van, a guard saluted as the body was brought in via a side door.
His longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, and a handful of consecrated laywomen who served in Benedict’s household, followed the van by foot in a silent procession toward the basilica.
The doors of the basilica were opened just after 9 a.m. The public were able to pay their respects to the pope, who became the first pope in 600 years to leave the papacy, after waiting for hours in the sun.
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After waiting in a line that snaked around the square, the public walked briskly up the center aisle to get to the bier.
“I wanted to pay homage to Benedict because he had a key role in my life and my education. I arrived here at around 7:30, after leaving Venice last night,” Tuccio said.
A pilgrim spoke about his participation in World Youth days when he was young, an event held periodically by pontiffs. He said that his pontificate accompanied him during his university years.
Public viewing lasts for 10 hours on Monday in St. Peter’s Basilica. Twelve hours of viewing are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday before Thursday morning’s funeral, which will be led by Pope Francis, at St. Peter’s Square.
“I think his main legacy was teaching us how to be free,” she said. “He had a special intelligence in saying what was essential in his faith and that was contagious” for other faithful. I was thinking when he died that he wanted to be as free as he was.
The Argentine-born pope has a different temperament than the German churchman, but that is not a problem for those who know the true relationship between them and Christ.