BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

On this day, one year ago... Andrea Tornielli turned his attention for one moment away from Pope Francis to come up with the following story...



Not that anyone in his right mind needs to be told by Benedict XVI himself that his resignation was valid and that speculations to the contrary are simply absurd. And conspiracy theorists like the otherwise rational Antonio Socci deserve to be swatted down for doing disservice to Benedict XVI, casting doubt on his very honesty and integrity, by speculations, cited without any factual ground whatsoever but supposedly based on 'reliable sources' who are, of course, never mentioned. Nor do the purveyors of this conspiracy ever give a hint as to who these mysterious 'forces' might be who could both push one Pope into resigning and manage to elect the Pope they want - somewhat like those phantom Twelve Men or something who are supposed to be running everything in the United States from the government to business and industry to media since after World War II.

But one must admire Andrea Tornielli for having the journalistic common sense (which apparently no one else thought to do) to write emeritus Pope Benedict XVI and ask him questions that have arisen anew - gratuitously and without apparent basis in fact - about his renunciation of the Papacy one year ago. And for thus providing Benedict XVI with an opportunity to dispel all such speculation...

I have bolded the parts of the news story that have to do directly with Benedict XVI's answer, since Tornielli chooses to tell it by interposing much background information and commentary in between reporting what the emeritus Pope actually wrote. I hope that on his blog, he will post the entire text of the letter, which must have been necessarily brief and concise... This story was, of course, promptly reported in the Anglophone media, including Vatican Radio's English service, but I have chosen to translate Tornielli's own news report:

Benedict XVI:
'My resignation is valid, and
it is absurd to think otherwise'
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from the Italian service of

February 26, 2014

"There is not the slightest doubt of the validity of my renunciation of the Petrine ministry and the speculations thereof are simply absurd".

Joseph Ratzinger was not forced to resign, he did not do so as a consequence of pressures and plots: his resignation is valid, and in the Church today, there is no 'diarchy'. No double governance - there is a reigning Pope with the fullness of his powers, and an emeritus Pope who considers it "the last and only task" of his days is to pray for his successor.

From the Mater Ecclesiae retirement home inside the Vatican, Benedict XVI took up pen and paper to rip apart the interpretations on his historic resignation a year ago, which have been raised anew in various media and on the Internet on the first anniversary of the event.

And he did so by a personal response to a letter with some questions that we had sent to him in recent days, after having read some comments in the Italian and international media regarding his resignation.

In brief but very precise terms, Ratzinger replied by belying all the alleged secret behind-the-scenes maneuverings behind his resignation, and requesting that no improper meanings be attached to his subsequent decisions. such as that of choosing to continue to wear a white cassock after the resignation,

As we all know, in a sensational and wholly unexpected announcement on February 11, 2013, Benedict XVI informed the cardinals who had come to the Apostolic Palace [to attend a consistory at which he announced the canonization date for the 800 15th-century martyrs of Otranto and two religious Bleaseds] if his decision, made in full freedom, to renounce the Pontificate because of advancing age, ingravescente aetate.

"I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry."

And he announced that the Apostolic See of Rome would be vacant starting from 8:00 p.m. of February 28, after which the cardinals would meet to elect his successor.

In the following days, he would make it known that he would keep the name Benedict XVI, and would be known as the 'emeritus Pope' after he left office (he signs the letter to me 'Benedict XVI' on stationery that bears the letterhead 'Emeritus Pope')

[I have seen Benedict XVI's handwritten dedication on a book he sent in gratitude to someone in November 2013 that is signed 'BENEDICTUS XVI', not Benedictus PP XVI' as he signed himself when he was Pope - and I think Tornielli should have made that important distinction. Which may not mean anything to him, because, in one of the earliest of his perplexing self-asserting decisions, Pope Francis chose not to write PP after his signature. But it is important, because PF does not issue official documents as 'FRANCISCUS'(the person, Jorge Mario Bergoglio using the papal name Francis) but as 'FRANCISCUS PP' (the Pope) as every Pope before him has done. This is a point I would like to return to later.]

Also that he would continue to wear the white cassock but in a way distinct from the Pope - without the capelet and without the papal sash.

At his last General Audience on Wednesday, February 27, 2013, in a sun-drenched St. Peter's Square that was teeming with the faithful, Benedict XVI said:

---

In these last months I have felt my energies declining, and I have asked God insistently in prayer to grant me his light and to help me make the right decision, not for my own good, but for the good of the Church. I have taken this step with full awareness of its gravity and even its novelty, but with profound interior serenity. Loving the Church means also having the courage to make difficult, painful decisions, always looking to the good of the Church and not of oneself.

---

He added that his retirement, to be 'hidden from the world', did not mean 'returning to privacy':

---

I do not return to private life, to a life of travel, meetings, receptions, conferences, and so on. I am not abandoning the cross, but remaining in a new way at the side of the crucified Lord. I no longer bear the power of office for the governance of the Church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, in the enclosure of Saint Peter.

Saint Benedict, whose name I bear as Pope, will be a great example for me in this. He showed us the way for a life which, whether active or passive, is completely given over to the work of God."

---

Precisely these words about wishing to remain 'in the enclosure of St. Peter' has led to the hypothesis that his resignation was not truly a decision freely taken and therefore not valid - almost as though Ratzinger had wanted to delineate for himself the role of a 'shadow Pope' - but this is the farthest thing from his temperament and sensibility that anyone could possibly imagine.

After the election of Pope Francis, the novelty of his Pontificate, the shake-up he is giving the Church with his words and his personal witness, it was 'physiological; that he would be compared to his predecessor - and this happens with every new Pontificate.

But it is a comparison that Benedict himself has always rejected. [We know from simple common sense and 'knowing' who he has been all his life, that would and does reject any comparisons with Pope Francis, but to my knowledge, he has not said so, simply because he has not given any interviews or made gratuitous statements reported by visitors who have spoken to him since the resignation. But it is a question I wish Tornielli had asked him, so he could have given a definitive answer, the way he answered Seewald about all the unfavorable comparsions made betwee him and John paul II.]

In the last few weeks, as the first anniversary of his resignation was approaching, there are those who have gone even farther. to hypothesize that Benedict XVI's resignation was invalid and that therefore he still had an active and institutional role alongside the reigning Pope.

On February 16, I sent the emeritus Pope a letter with some specific questions regarding these hypotheses. His answer came two days later.

He wrote: "There is not the slightest doubt about the validity of my renunciation of the Petrine ministry. The only condition for validity is the full freedom with which the decision is made. Speculations about the validity of my resignation are simply absurd"

Besides, it was well-known to those closes to him that he had been considering the possibility of resignation, as he himself confirmed in the interview book with German journalist Peter Seewald (Light of the World, 2010), "If a Pope clearly realizes that he is no longer able - physically, psychologically and spiritually - to carry out the duties of his office, then he has the right, and in some cases, the duty, t0 resign:".

[That was not interpreted at the time to mean he was actually considering resignation, only that he expressed the conditions under which he thought a Pope ought to resign. and it showed that he had thought much about this possibility, surely since the final months of John Paul II's agony. In fact, he goes on to say - this was in July 2010, midpoint of the annus horribilis of his Papacy, when the most powerful media forces in the world sought to force him to resign by a merciless and unabating campaign seeking to link him personally to various specific sex-abuse cases from the 1980s and earlier that were mishandled or covered up - that a Pope, however, cannot flee during a crisis. Indeed, he would remain Pope for another two years and seven months, resisting even the 2012 media campaign centered around Vatileaks, also intended to hound him out of office because of supposed 'evil and corruption' in his Curia.]

It was inevitable one year ago, after his announcement - because never had a Pope in the Church's 2000-year history ever resigned because of old age - to link his decision to the poisonous atmosphere created by Vatileaks and by conspiracies witin the Roman Curia [What conspiracies, Mr. Tornielli? Were we ever told of anything outside the silly thirdhand story of a cardinal telling Chinese officials in 2011 that Benedict XVI would be gone within a year (he would be poisoned, or he would die of cancer) because there were some in the Vatican actively plotting to dictate who would succeed him as Pope?]

Benedict XVI's entire Pontificate was a Via Crucis, especially the last years. First, because of the 'pedophile priest scandals' - which he courageously confronted without blaming any lobbies or 'the exertnal enemies' of the Church, but rather the evil within the Church herself. And afterwards, because of the documents leaked to a journalist by his own valet who had copied various documents he was able to lay hands on in the Pope's study [covering the period from 2009-2011]

Therefore, his resignation was seen in this context. But Benedict XVI had said, in the same interview with Peter Seewald, that one does not abandon ship during a storm at sea.

And that is why before announcing his decision - one that he had taken months earlier and confided to his closest associates so that appropriate preparations could be made - he waited until the Vatileaks episode was concluded, with the trial of Paolo Gabriele and the confidential investigation he had asked three cardinals to make into the circumstances within the Vatican that had led to Vatileaks. He resigned only after these pending matters had been concluded.

[A dossier that he consigned only to his successor, at their first meeting on March 21, 2013, obviously for his guidance and information. From PF's lack of any references to it, it probably did not reveal anything 'actionable' in terms of serious culpability on the part of anyone in the Curia. He did tell the bishops of Puglia in May - two months after he received the dossier from Benedict XVI - that "there is a gay lobby in the Vatican - it does exist", which he would also tell the newsmen at his July 2013 inflight news conference from Rio, but without any statement to show that it was a serious concern for him, nor any details to support the statement (nor was he asked for it). In fact, it was the occasion and context for his celebrated "Who am I to judge" declaration.

If the three cardinals did discover anything more serious than the usual and expected human failings and misdemeanors of some officials and staff in the Curia, are we to interpret certain personnel decisions of PF exclusively in that light? For instance, if I were Tornielli, I would nonetheless look into the demotion of Cardinal Mauro Piacenza from Prefect of the Clergy to Apostolic Penitentiary, and the provisional nature of the confirmation of Cardinal Angelo Amato at the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood. Not, God forbid, that I am implying either cardinal may have been found to be culpable of something not quite right, but that it is a journalistic duty anyway, to look into these two egregious cases. if only because both cardinals have never been linked publicly to anything shadowy, so could there be compelling reasons other than just PF's personal preferences, for him to single them out for 'punishment'?

Moreover, this media insistence on considering Vatileaks a factor at all - let alone a serious factor - in Benedict XVI's decision to give up the Pontificate is a nefarious consequence of the fact that they had inflated it to an 'issue' far out of proportion to its actual significance.

1) Other than the Vigano letters, the thirdhand scuttlebutt about a plot to kill Benedict XVI (or at any rate, get him out of the way somehow by 2012), and Mons. Gaenswein's meeting with a former secretary of Fr. Maciel who said that the people around John Paul II had refused to let him speak to the Pope about Maciel, none of the 200-plus documents pilfered by Gabriele revealed anything new that had not been reported before. Not even Cardinal Bertone's less-than-glorious attempts to reinforce his personal power base in moves that were promptly vetoed by Benedict XVI - all that had been amply reported by Tornielli et al.

2) More importantly, not a single document revealed any specific case of 'evil and corruption' such as Mons Vigano and later, Paolo Gabriele, would claim. And yet, the media simply took their word for it and did not even launch any investigation to find out if there were any such specific cases. I always said that the fact they did not do this at all simply means they knew there was nothing substantial to investigate. Otherwise, why waste the opportunity to make an even bigger name for themselves than Gabriele or Nuzzi if they did come up with something truly scandalous, especially anything that would implicate Benedict XVI himself - who remained untainted by any of the Vatileaks documents but became the ultimate media victim of the entire disgusting episode.

Media simply used Vigano and Gabriele's words to 'confirm' what they have always written about the Curia, anyway - though previously without the venom that characterized their generic blanket denunciations during and after Vatileaks, A venom apparently ingested and assimilated. completely without critical judgment, into the bloodstream of the cardinal electors in the 2013 Conclave, because it obviously poisoned the atmosphere of their pre-Conclave congregations, whose theme appeared to be a wholesale rejection and dismissal of the Ratzinger Pontificate on the basis alone of his supposedly 'evil and corrupt' Curia.

In the letter answering our questions, the emeritus Pope also comments on the significance of his white habit and retaining his popal name.

"Maintaining the white habit and the name Benedict were simply practical matters. When I resigned, I had no other garments, But I wear the white cassock in a clearly distinct manner from the Pope. Even in this, the speculations are comnpletely unfounded".

[The question about the papal name is completely uncalled for. No Pope ever 'loses' his papal name, by which he will always be known in history! And no one ever says ex-Pope John Paul II or ex-Pope-whatever after a Pope dies! Except for St. Peter, all former Popes are always referred to as 'Pope..."

Before Benedict XVI announced his decisions on these 'practical matters' last year, many opinions were written on what he should be called after he was no longer Pope.

Some supposedly 'authoritative' opinions claimed that the most he could be called was 'emeritus Bishop of Rome'. An illogical proposition, to begin with, because he did not only resign as Bishop of Rome, but as Pope, which goes with being Bishop of Rome and is the more inclusive and 'higher' title. So his own decision - he could make it because no resigned Pope before him had to face a similar situation - that the right title for him would be 'emeritus Pope' makes sense: being 'emeritus' covers any and all other titles that he may have had as Pope and Bishop of Rome. Deciding that he would henceforth be called "His Holiness Benedict XVI, emeritus Pope" was not an act of vain self-assertion (as no one has dared to claim) but of respect for the office of the Pope, so that it cannot be demeaned even in referring to one who was no longer Pope but who had held the office of Pope ... But this is all water under the bridge now, because the media - and the world with it - certainly had no problem immediately referring to him as the emeritus Pope.]

And Benedict XVI gave clear and far more significant proof of his statement last Saturday, when he attended the consistory at the invitation of Pope Francis. He did not wish a special place of honor, but sat off to a corner, in the row of the cardinal-bishops, on a chair like theirs.

And when Pope Francis came up to greet him and embrace him, before and after the ceremony, Benedict XVI took of his zucchetto to indicate his reverence, and to make it clear publicly that there is only one Pope.

Last month, Swiss theologian Hans Kueng cited some statements written to him by Benedict XVI with reference to Pope Francis, in a letter dated January 24, 2014. The words were unequivocal: "I am grateful to be linked to Pope Francis by a great identity of views and by a friendship of the heart. Today I see it as my last and only task to support his Pontificate in prayer".

On the Internet, some have tried to cast doubt on the authenticity of the statement which has been instrumentalized for various uses. So we also asked the emeritus Pope about this. He answered definitively:
"Prof. Kueng has cited literally and correctly the words from my letter to him".

He concluded by expressing the hope that he had answered our questions "clearly and adequately".

P.S. Beatrice on her site expresses outrage that Tornielli should have written Benedict XVI with his questions, and thinks it shows a lack of respect.

I, of course, as an ex-journalist, respectfully disagree and think otherwise. Anyone is free to write Benedict XVI, and it is up to him to respond or not. He did respond to Tornielli, whom he has known far longer than the friendship between Tornielli and Pope Francis, and who, before the advent of Pope Francis, was always one of Benedict XVI's staunchest admirers.

(The fact that Tornielli has since found 'a newer, better model' as it were in Pope Francis does not invalidate the good things he wrote about Benedict XVI earlier, even if he chooses now to ignore all of that, as if everything good that Pope Francis says and does were the very first time ever that any Pope had said or done them. It can also mean. however, that Tornielli is simply the ultimate fair-weather friend, in which case, should we then consider his current eulogies of PF merely provisional untl a newer, better model comes along?)

I had occasion to remark with Tornielli's article about Benedict XVI's attendance at the consistory, that I do find it very disrespectful of Tornielli and any other writer to refer to a Pope, any Pope, baldly by just his surname, but it has lamentably become a bad journalistic custom.

However. I certainly do not think that writing the letter that he did to Benedict XVI was disrespectful. On the contrary, I thought at once that it was a commendable journalistic initiative.

Beatrice also believes that, given Tornielli's intimacy with Pope Francis, to the point of being his unofficial spokesman, he must have written the letter with the Pope's knowledge and permission. I personally do not think Tornielli would have even thought that necessary, when he was merely doing what a journalist with common sense would do! [Peter Seewald would not have thought to ask him, because he is working with him on a new biography that will include his Pontificate and its aftermath so far. Vittorio Messori would not, because he said in a recent interview that he respects Benedict XVI's desire for privacy, and expressed his outright 'amusement' outright at all the conspiracy theorists speculating about the resignation.

But Tornielli, unlike the other two, covers the Vatican as a daily beat, so he has a legitimate journalistic urgency to ask - and the perfect freedom to do so. I cannot speculate why no one else among the active Vaticanistas thought of simply writing Benedict XVI about this controversy, manufactured as it is, other than that they found it so far out, and so out of touch with reality that they couldn't be bothered.

On the other hand, if one ascribes ulterior motives to Tornielli for asking the questions directly of Benedict XVI, what was he hoping to gain? Certainly not added certitude or 'confirmation' that Pope Francis is tne one and only Pope today, and the satisfaction. perhaps even the Schadenfreude, of getting Benedict to say that. Which he didn't, not in those words, but by underscoring that his resignation was valid - from which everything else follows. But why would someone like Tornielli need any such explicit certitude from anyone when, apart from the lunatic fringe, which always exists on any issue, no one could possibly be in doubt that Francis is the Pope and Benedict XVI cannot be other than the 'ex-Pope' now!]

But even if Tornielli did clear his letter with Pope Francis, it does not annul the validity of his writing the letter at all. Much less, the importance of Benedict XVI being able to express himself, without taking the initiative, regarding all the wild-eyed, harebrained speculation being peddled by Socci and a prominent papal blogger, Antonio Mastino, about the invalidity of his resignation. (In which they painstakingly parse words that Benedict XVI himself had said, in order to find 'hints' of the pressures he supposedly underwent, or worse, which I object to the most, words that supposedly show he had no intention of giving up the Papacy entirely! They are really nuts! One is either still the Pope or not a Pope at all - there is no halfway measure.) Who would have thought that such an obviously transparent decision by the most transparent of all individuals would occasion these uncharitable and irresponsible speculations!

Benedict XVI's answer will certainly not discourage them at all from pursuing their speculations - conspiracy theorists never lay anything to rest - and they will now subject Benedict XVI's new words to even more exploitative parsing to 'prove' their demented arguments. But at least, he has an answer on the record directly addressing them. And an answer given rather promptly too. The rule in the media is that if you let unfounded speculation - i.e., lies - go unanswered, it is tantamount to 'confirming' it.

[It was different when the media big guns went after Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI on the sex abuse issue, because they tried to link him directly to specific cases, but their arguments fortunately were not borne out by actual facts documented and publicly known about those cases. Therefore, an explicit answer from the Pope himself was not called for and would have been superfluous and unseemly, given the publicly known facts. Of course, that does not exonerate the Vatican Press Office and all the other Church hierarchy, except Cardinal William Levada, who did not lift a finger to underscore the facts contradicting the media's own accusations.

The most notorious of this, of course, was the massive document dump placed online by the New York Times itself in its its 'scoop' about Cardinal Ratzinger's failure to defrock a Milwaukee priest who had been accused of abusing hundreds of children in the 1960s in a school for the deaf. The documents make it clear that the accusations were investigated by the Milwaukee police in 1972 and they found nothing actionable against the priest. Nonetheless, the diocese forced the priest to go into retir=ement because of the accusations. [Indeed, no one in the media has even thought to credit that diocese for having the good sense to do this, way back in 1972]. The case was brought to the CDF by a new Milwaukee bishop 20 years after the priest's retirement, during which there were no new accusations against him. By then, the priest was dying of a terminal cancer, and in fact, died four months after the diocese decided to reopen the case.

I recreate the facts of the Murphy case for those who may have forgotten the witch hunt aspect of the media crusade against Benedict XVI in 2010. Such was the tenuous and absurd nature of the accusations with which the big guns of MSM sought to pressure Benedict XVI to resign at that time.

Given Socci's track record for pursuing an 'idee fixe' (e.g, the 'fourth secret of Fatima') and the fact that Joseph Ratzinger knows from experience that Socci has always been otherwise an insightful reporter and commentator of Church affairs, it is important that Benedict XVI made the statement he did.

Nor do I think that Benedict XVI would have asked Pope Francis's permission to answer Tornielli. Since when does he need anyone's pormission to answer questions placed to him directly, and which could not possibly reflect negatively in any way on the faith, the Church, Pope Francis and his Pontificate? I am sure he did not ask PF's permission to write the lengthy letter he did to Piergiorgio Odifredddi! Or to Hans Kueng or anybody else, for that matter!

His answers to Tornielli make it unequivocal - all over, if anyone needed to be reassured - that he is not encroaching in any way on any of the reigning Pope's prerogatives, that he gives him the respect and obedience he promised before he even knew who his successor was going to be, and which he pledged in person during that first telephone call that the new Pope made to him from the Sistine Chapel after he was elected.

We have to live with reality. Media will always find a reason to stir up dead embers whenever they can, especially if the embers are from a conflagration entirely of their own doing. And have to do with a person whom they love to hate and who provides them with a convenient focus for all their hostilities and objections against the Church

Today, Benedict XVI has become more than ever a fresh target because the caricature of him that they have presented to the world provides them with the perfect foil to extol the excellencies of the person they consider to be the more-than-perfect Pope.

The media's constant misrepresentstion of him is really the main Cross that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has had to carry over the past 40 years of his life. Who more than he can realize that this is the specific suffering assigned to him by the Lord as his participation in the Lord's continuing Passion for the sins of mankind? In that sense, I believe he welcomes the suffering God has seen fit to give him. John Paul's affliction was physical, a concrete affliction willed by the Lord. Benedict's is s burden of false bstractions imposed on him by others, not something he has generated himself.

My attitude has always been that as terrible as all this seems to us who love him, God also gave him the spiritual resources and grace to help him carry his part of Christ's Cross. And therefore, as human as he is, he is far better equipped than we lesser mortals are to cope with his lot. If in the final stage of his life, God cannot spare him of the media scourge, may He continue to bless him with all the graces He has endowed on him so generously!