BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Wednesday, March 13, Fourth Week of Lent

Second from left: Medieval illustration of Pope Gregory and Leandro; extreme right, the Virgin of Guadalupe (Spain).
ST. LEANDRO DE SEVILLA [Leander of Seville] (Spain, 550-600), Benedictine, Bishop and Confessor
All four siblings in this Hispano-Roman family became saints. Leandro was the older brother of Isidore, who succeeded him
as Bishop of Seville and went on to become a Doctor of the Church. Their brother Fulgencio, who became Bishop of Cartagena,
and their sister Florentina, who was an abbess over a thousand nuns, are also saints. Leandro spent most of his life fighting
the Arian heresy. He is credited with introducing the Credo into the Mass in order for the faithful to always keep in mind
the essentials of their faith. He was named Bishop of Seville in 579 but in the same year he was exiled by the Visigoth king
who was Arian. He spent three years in Constantinople where he met the future Pope Gregory the Great (Pope 590-604), who
was papal legate to the Byzantine court. They were to carry on a correspondence. Gregory gave Leandro an image of Mary which
became venerated in Seville. In 711, when the Moors invaded Seville, the Spanish king's men placed the image in a casket and
buried it in the mountains. In 1326, a peasant in the western region of Extremadura had a vision of Mary which led him to the
casket. The image was found intact and a church was built for it in the village of Guadalupe, and her cult grew nationwide.
Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors carried her image on their travels. Not surprising that the Spanish bishop in Mexico who
certified Juan Diego's Marian vision in 1531 named the miraculous image Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose renown has now far
outstripped the original. After his exile, Leandro went on with his campaign to root out the Arian heresy and converted
two Visigoth kings away from Arianism. In 589, he convoked the Third Council of Toledo, at which Visigoth Spain abjured
Arianism. Leandro was considered a greater writer than Isidore but only two short works survive.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031313.cfm




On this day last year, the Holy Father Benedict XVI had no scheduled events. But, incredible as it now seems, the Italian media were preoccupied at the time dismissing suggestions that he would or should retire 'soon' for reasons other than he said a Pope should consider retiring. The following is a sample commentary from that time (and my own outraged reactions denying that such a possibility was even on the horizon)...



Lucio Brunelli is a veteran Vaticanista whose commentaries on Benedict XVI's Pontificate have generally been positive, and even excellent occasionally. My only problem with him is that he wrote the infamous article in autumn of 2005 purporting to recount what went on inside the 2005 Conclave on the basis of supposed 'disclosures' by an unnamed cardinal. He either used the anonymous cardinal as a device to account for data he gathered independently, or there really was a cardinal who did not mind violating the secrecy oath he swore before the Conclave, to perpetrate his tale in the media, and whom Brunelli believed enough to write the dubious 'scoop'...

On the Pope's resignation
and Ferrara's advice
by Lucio Brunelli
Translated from 'VITA'
March 13, 2012

Papa Ratzinger like Celestine V? Like the 'Pope of the great rejection' as Dante called him, the humble and pious Pope who stripped himself of the vestments and trappings of the Successor of Peter and abdicated his functions?

The remote hypothesis that Benedict XVI might one day imitate the gesture of his most venerated medieval predecessor appears to be capturing the imagination of the mass media, bringing forth so many speculations, gossip and unlikely theories.

Such as that presented by Giuliano Ferrara in his newspaper Il Foglio, according to which the German Pope could (or rather, should) resign in order to influence more effectively the choice of his successor - perhaps a theological clone of his, but more 'muscular' and less 'penitential' than Benedict XVI has been (too 'penitential', it seems, for Ferrara who is a declared atheist).

For those who may ask, can a Pope resign? Yes, the Church allows this. On two conditions: that the Pope has come to his decision voluntarily and freely, and that he can explain it clearly.

All the Popes of the last century have had to face the dilemma of resignation at one time or other, fearing that with old age, they may lose mental lucidity.

Nature has helped them all. None of them had the least symptoms of Alzheimer's or other age-related mental weakness, nor did anyone ever fall into a prolonged coma.

With Papa Wojtyla, he was held up by his personal mystical vision of the Papacy in which the Vicar of Christ, even arriving at the extreme limits of suffering and physically invalid, cannot and must not 'descend from the Cross'.

Papa Ratzinger does not seem to have this mystical tendency. [He says so!, but then, even if he were 'mystic', he would be the type who would keep that his secret alone]. For him, the Papacy is a function - important, but 'not the last recourse', as he said last March 4 to the faithful in a Roman parish, since "the last recourse is the Lord alone". [Very Ratzingerian!]

Moreover, he stated his thinking about resignation very clearly in the interview-book with Peter Seewald Light of the World published in November 2010: “If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right, and under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign.”

So, he said everything he needs to say about this issue, more than a year ago, quite simply and clearly. He considers it his duty to abdicate if and when he feels that he no longer has the physical mental and spiritual energies to carry out his ministry.

Has this moment arrived? In the Roman Curia, gossip thrives. Some have hypothesized he would do so on April 16, when he turns 85. Others, after this hypothesis was shot down all round, now claim he will do at the end of the Year of Faith that he decreed (in November 2012). [2013 P.S. It turns out itactually happened in between!]

No one can know other than Benedict XVI himself - and he is not likely to confide his plans to some monsignor in the Curia! [But even this is assuming that he is thinking of resigning, even when there is no objective reason for doing so - at least, none that the outside world is aware of, nor even hinted at! Of course, he's the first Pope to reach 85 since Leo XIII - in whose time there was no 24/7 media who monitored his every breath for signs of imminent death! - but he is far from incapacitated in any significant way, or in any way we can tell that is not normal to men of his age!]

He probably has not even planned what to do if the eventuality arose, because his actual psycho-physical conditions appear normal for a man his age. In the recent consistory, he asked the new cardinals and the faithful to pray for him so that he "may continue to guide the tiller of the Church with gentle firmness". [And everyone thought at the time that it was his direct response to those who have been hypothesizing his resignation! Nothing has changed in the few weeks since then! Why the new onslaught?]

The same spiritual determination with which he faced the scabrous case of Father Maciel's Legionaries of Christ [And the entire priest-abusers crisis, actually!!!] and the irreversible reforms of IOR - matters left untouched by the Polish Pope, perhaps because of the many Curial opacities and complicities that Benedict XVI has had the courage to pry open.

Of course, anything can happen. With or without a papal resignation. But the only scenario that is not at all realistic is that of a retired Ratzinger who would seek, as a superannuated cardinal, to direct the interplay in the Conclave to elect his successor.

First, because this does not fall at all within the rules of the Church, but above all, it does not fit Benedict XVI's style or personality at all.

If one day he should decide to resign as Pope, we can be sure he will make himself instantly invisible, self-secluded in some closed monastic cloister.

I have not, of course, made reference here to a follow-up article to Ferrara by Antonio Socci, who filed the story in September, while the Pope was visiting in Germany, that he may resign when he turns 85 this April. It is doubly distressing that two self-declared admirers of Benedict XVI - from when he was Cardinal Ratzinger - like Ferrara and Socci should have been the ones to feed the 'resignation speculation' hypothesis, for no objective reason one can see other than as an intellectual exercise on their part ("Our brains are extraordinary, and mere mortals cannot even begin to conceive what we can!")...

Some commentators claim to see the Ferrara-Socci initiatives as part of an externally orchestrated effort to 'pressure' Benedict XVI into resigning. Which is absurd because no one has ever thought Joseph Ratzinger is someone who would cave in to any pressure. And who might these external 'forces' be who are behind such an attempt, and what do they hope to accomplish by it? Put a sudden stop to Benedict XVI's reforms and install someone who will not rock their boat? The latter is easy to say, not at all easy to do. It would be tantamount to doing battle against the Holy Spirit.

It is just as absurd to think that Ferrara and Socci would lend themselves to any such externally orchestrated campaign. They are much too egotistic for that. And to what end? Since they claim tacitly to want the next Pope to carry out more directly and effectively what they consider ought to be the program for a Pope, how do they know they will get such a Pope, even assuming the unthinkable situation that a 'retired Ratzinger' would seek to guide the choice of his own successor? Such wishful thinking only generates a labyrinth of illogic and improbability that one can only think their minds have become the devil's playground. I can find no other rationale.

It's incredible that anyone is even wasting time on such speculation. and yet we are. Long and well and healthily may Benedict XVI continue to serve as Vicar of Christ on earth! [2013 P.S. So it was not to be!]