Georg Ratzinger on his brother's decision:
'I knew it was coming -
we are all small and mortal'
Interview by Andrea Tarquini
Translated from
February 12, 2013
Berlin – “I have known it was coming for some time, and we had spoken about it. It is a gesture of Christian humility and reminds us that we are all small and mortal.”
Mons. Georg Ratzinger sought to keep back his emotion and his nervousness as we spoke on the telephone.
Padre Georg, how did you react when you learned the news? Were you surprised?
No, because I had known with certainty for some time that the moment of decision would have to come, and that he would know how to face it.
Did you know this or did you assume it?
I knew and I assumed, for many reasons - not the least because I too am old and I have three more years than he has weighing down on me.
Therefore?
And so I know the feeling very well, because I have been experiencing advanced age muself as a time of passage and change. I know how after a certain age, you feel that your strength is diminishing daily, that it is abandoning you little by little.
It is a turning point that changes you within = day after day, it reduces each of your capacities, of the body and of the spirit, capacities that had always accompanied you and which you had considered your day-to-day condition. But in old age, the time comes which makes us face its challenges and forces us to make choices.
What did you think of the decision your brother made, as a man of faith and as a brother?
I look at it very objectively, or at least I try. I had observed for some time how he did not seem to have the strength he used to have, and that this was affecting his will to go on. To the point that he no longer feels he has enough to be able to continue being in the Chair of Peter. At least, not with the energies and the sense of responsibility that he has always felt it dutiful and necessary for the job.
Is it true that his doctors had advised him against making any more long trips?
It is true, His personal physician expressly told him that from here on, he should avoid trans-Atlantic trips or similar long-distance travel because his physical condition no longer allows it.
And is it true that your brother finds it difficult even to walk now?
Yes, for some time now, he has had to come to terms with that.
And so this has been a dramatic internal struggle for him?
Not dramatic – he has not lived it as anything dramatic, But with full awareness that the problem of steadily deteriorating strength would only grow worse with time.
Do you think your brother will return to Bavaria?
No. I think he wants to stay in Rome. I expect to see him soon but that would be when I go to Rome, though I do not have any definite travel plans just now.
Do you think his decision was good or admirable?
It was a conclusion that was merited – this conscious decision he made. It is a way of saying, as a Christian, that we are all small and mortal. .. Let us hope that a new generation of religious persons will be maturing who are able to face the challenges for which elderly people like us no longer have the capcity to find the right answers.
I was frankly surprised at first that Benedict XVI is staying on in Rome, because I had assumed he would go back to Bavaria as he wanted to do back in 2005 after John Paul II died. I think practical reasons have compelled him not to do so, because it would present the Vatican with the logistical problems - and great expense - of having to provide for an ex-Pope living in a foreign country, a problem it has never had to face. On the other hand, it is used to arranging living conditions for emeritus cardinals who live in Rome, and if it was possible to give Cardinal Sodano an apartment in one of the buildings in the Vatican, then it ought to be possible to do that for Cardinal Ratzinger. Within Vatican walls, they do not need special security. I do wonder whether it will be possible for Benedict XVI now to travel to Regensburg the next Feast of All Souls to visit his parents' and sister's graves, or would that cause the same logistical difficulties even if short-term for the Vatican?
I find this brief interview the most compelling and touching 'explanation' if anyone needed it for Benedict XVI's resignation. Georg Ratzinger's description of the qualitative and not just quantitative change in human physiology that comes after a certain age is something no octogenarian has had to describe in public before, because after all, how many octogenarians have stayed on occupying high public position even in our time? The Church can point back to Paul VI who reached 81 and John Paul II who reached 84, but Paul VI died of a heart attack, and John Paul II had spent ten years afflicted with Parkinson's disease with its far worse degenerative effects on the body than simple old age. so neither case was 'typical'.
Benedict XVI has aged before our eyes, though I am guilty of trying to fend off having to acknowledge that as much as I could. At a certain point - that I cannot place - he stopped being the youthful, ageless marvel that he had been for us in the first years of the Pontificate, and to show the normal ravages of age. Better than most octogenarians, true, in terms of his physical appearance, because he remains a very good-looking man.
But because he always seemed to hold up well for the public events that we could watch - other than small signs like an occasional stumble - it was not until the rolling platform came into use that it dawned on me how much we do not see of his actual physical condition by the limited observations we have of him during his public events, and started redoubling my prayers for his health, calling especially on Padre Pio and Blessed John Paul II to intercede for him.
I am not surprised at the revelation that he has had a pacemaker for the past ten years or so, given his known medical history since his stroke in the early 1990s. That he needed a pacemaker at least four years before his older brother got one already tells us something.
Would the cardinals have elected him Pope in 2005 if they had known he was using a pacemaker? I think so, because there was no other viable choice for that historical moment, especially if - as many presume - they thought they were choosing a transitional Pope, someone who could get the Church through the trauma of John Paul II's death and the years of his worsening illness. In the same way that they did not consider his age an impediment for that reason, they would not have thought a pacemaker in this day and age would represent an additional impediment!
So here we are contemplating this infinitely beloved figure who has been such an integral part of my most intimate being for the past eight years that I cannot imagine how I will deal, 15 days from now, with the new reality that I will no longer have virtual contact with or knowledge of what he is doing every day. It is some comfort that he has already left us so much to look back on even in eight short years - not to mention everything that preceded his being Pope - that I can spend as much time looking back on each day of those past eight years, with as much joy and vivid pleasure as I now spend following what he does every day (and the good things written about him). And that does not even include a systematic (preferably chronological) read-through of his major texts, if not all his books. Not to mention a necessary daily online search of any new material about him...
So yes, I will keep being just as occupied with Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI who has enriched my life in every way, far more than anyone ever has, or that I ever thought any person could possibly do. And as I said to Gloria after the announcement came, we must be thankful we are not mourning a death, that heretofore unspeakable eventuality that I had refused to think about at all before this, but for which this constitutes an unexpected preparation.
God willing, without the burden of daily work at age 86 - unthinkable for most people even if it were the simplest job - he will have many more years ahead of him. God always be with you, dearest Benedict. You will always be under his special care even after you are no longer his Vicar on earth, just as for us, you will always be our 'dolce Cristo in terra'.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/02/2013 12:10]