January 1st, 2023 at 06:25 pm

Benedict XVI, 95, dies

Pope Benedict XVI, who led the Catholic church from 2005 to 2013, died on Saturday at 95, three days after Pope Francis announced his grave illness.

Francis will lead Benedict’s funeral in St. Peter’s Square on Thursday, the Vatican announced. From Monday, his body will lie at St. Peter’s Basilica for worshippers.

Benedict’s death ends an unprecedented period of two popes coexisting, which has caused Vatican divisions. It allows Pope Francis to consider retiring like Benedict, which was impossible with three popes.

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer praised Benedict’s historic 2010 UK visit. Michael D Higgins, Emmanuel Macron, Giorgia Meloni, and Olaf Scholz also paid tribute.

He was described as a scholar, pastor, and man of God by Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster and head of the Roman Catholic church in England and Wales, who also praised him for “his courtesy, his gentleness, the perceptiveness of his mind, and the openness of his welcome to everyone that he met.”

Benedict was “one of the greatest theologians of his age,” according to Canterbury Archbishop Justin Welby.

Pope Francis told his weekly audience this week that Benedict was “very sick” and requested prayers.

Benedict, born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger in Germany in 1927, was a conservative pope whose tenure was overshadowed by church sexual abuse scandals. After a polarizing papacy, he retired.

He was born in rural Bavaria to a policeman and joined the Hitler Youth at 14 to fight in World War II. He deserted and was briefly imprisoned by US forces at the end of the war.

Cardinal Ratzinger later became Pope John Paul II’s, right-hand man. He was known as “God’s rottweiler” for his 24-year leadership of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Inquisition.

Clerical sexual abuse and cover-up allegations surfaced during his tenure. After being elected pope in April 2005, his critics said he failed to grasp the gravity of the crimes and the crisis, which peaked several years later.

The Vatican was rocked by the theft of confidential documents, many of which later appeared in an exposé of alleged corruption. Paolo Gabriele, the pope’s butler, was found guilty in October 2012. He claimed he fought “evil and corruption” at trial.

Benedict was staunchly anti-homosexuality and pro-contraception. He opposed liberation theology, a 1960s South American radical movement that promoted clerical social activism among the poor and marginalized.

In February 2013, he became the first pope to resign at 85. He said he lacked the strength to lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. “I had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me,” he said.

Pope Emeritus, vowed to remain “hidden from the world” and pray alone. He read, wrote letters and articles, entertained guests, and played the piano in a Vatican City monastery.

But the former pope remained a powerful conservative influence and a focus for Francis’s opponents. He wrote, spoke, and interviewed often. Benedict wrote a 6,000-word letter in April 2019, two months after Francis held a groundbreaking Vatican conference on sexual abuse, blaming sexual freedom from the 1960s.

As Francis considered allowing married men to become priests in limited circumstances, Benedict publicly defended clerical celibacy in January 2020. “I cannot keep silent,” he wrote in From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church arguing that priestly celibacy protected the church’s mystery.

The controversy, which erupted before Netflix aired The Two Popes, revealed Vatican factions.