VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, the timid German theologian who tried to revive Christianity in a secularized Europe and who will be remembered as the first pontiff to step down in 600 years, died Saturday. He was 95 years old.
Benedict XVI shocked the world on February 11, 2013 when he announced, in his typical soft-spoken Latin, that he no longer had the strength to continue leading the Catholic Church of 1.2 billion faithful that he had commanded for eight years in the midst of scandals and indifference.
His dramatic decision ushered in the conclave that elected Pope Francis as his successor. Since then the two pontiffs have lived together in the Vatican gardens, in an unprecedented agreement that laid the foundations for future “popes emeritus” to do the same.
And this paved the way for an acting pontiff to preside over the funeral mass of a retired one. The Vatican announced that Pope Francis will preside over the funeral Thursday in St. Peter’s Square.
Francis praised Benedict XVI in remarks Saturday during a ceremony at St. Peter’s Basilica.
“Only God knows the value and strength of his intercession, of his sacrifices offered for the good of the Church,” he declared.
In a statement Saturday morning, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said: “It is with regret that I announce that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI passed away today at 9:34 a.m. in the Vatican’s Mater Ecclesiae Monastery.”
Former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger never wanted to be pope, and at 78 he planned to spend his final years writing in the “peace and quiet” of his native Bavaria.
Instead, he was forced to take the place of beloved Saint John Paul II in 2005 and lead the Church amid a clerical sexual abuse scandal, followed by another when his own butler stole his personal documents and handed them over to him. to a journalist.
When he was elected pope, he noted on one occasion, he felt as if he had been put through the “guillotine.”
Despite that, he took office with the firm intention of rekindling faith in a world that, he often lamented, seemed to think it could do without God.
“In large parts of the world today there is a strange forgetfulness of God,” he told the million young people who gathered in a vast field on his first foreign trip as pope, at World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany. , in 2005. “It seems as if everything would be the same even without him.”
With some key, often contentious decisions, he sought to remind Europe of its Christian heritage. And he led the Church down a traditional, conservative path that often annoyed progressives. He relaxed restrictions on celebrating the Old Latin Mass and cracked down on American nuns, insisting that the Church remain faithful to her doctrine and traditions in the face of a changing world. It was a path that in many ways was reversed by his successor Francis, whose priorities of mercy over morality alienated traditionalists, with whom Benedict had been lenient.
But the legacy of Benedict XVI was irreversibly marked by the worldwide outbreak of the sexual abuse scandal in 2010, despite the fact that when he was a cardinal he was responsible for the Vatican changing its approach on the matter.
According to the documents, despite being well aware of the problem, the Holy See ignored it for decades, going so far as to disavow bishops who tried to do the right thing.
Benedict XVI knew first-hand the magnitude of the problem, since in his former position at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which he had directed since 1982, he was responsible for dealing with cases of abuse.
In fact, it was he who in 2001 made the decision, then revolutionary, to assume responsibility for processing these cases after realizing that bishops from all over the world did not punish the aggressors, but merely transferred them to another parish, where they could return. to violate.
And once he assumed the papacy, he essentially acted very differently from John Paul II, cracking down on the most famous pedophile priest of the 20th century, the Mexican Marcial Maciel. Benedict XVI took over the Legionaries of Christ, Maciel’s conservative religious order that his predecessor had considered a model of orthodoxy, after it was revealed that the founder had sexually abused seminarians and fathered at least three children.
Already retired, the emeritus pope was singled out in an independent report for his treatment of four priests when he was bishop of Munich. He denied having committed any crime on a personal level, but apologized for any “serious misconduct.”
Born on April 16, 1927 in Marktl Am Inn, in Bavaria, Benedict XVI wrote in his memoirs that he was enlisted in the Nazi youth against his will in 1941, when he was 14 years old and membership was compulsory. He deserted from the German army in April 1945, in the last days of World War II.
He was ordained a priest with his brother Georg in 1951. After spending several years teaching theology in Germany, he was made bishop of Munich in 1977, and Pope Paul VI made him a cardinal three months later.
