Joseph Ratzinger, who died this Saturday, came to the chair of Peter with the aura of a conservative cardinal, an orthodox theologian and a faithful follower of the work of John Paul II, of whom he was the right hand. He did not disappoint those expectations. But he had to live through very difficult times and manage a serious internal crisis in the Church, shaken by a devastating moral scandal –the cases of pedophilia- and internecine intrigues motivated, in part, by inherited financial irregularities. This combination of factors, together with his advanced age, meant that the most transcendental decision of Benedict XVI's eight-year pontificate was not conservative but totally revolutionary. His voluntary resignation on February 11, 2013 shook the institution and stunned the world. It hadn't happened in six centuries. Ratzinger thus broke the principle of the papacy for life. Although it was not a dogma, it had imposed itself on the collective conscience.
The late pope emeritus was born in Markl (Bavaria) on April 16, 1927. He was the youngest of three brothers. His father, a police officer, was openly suspicious of the Nazis. However, like other adolescents of his age, Ratzinger had to enroll in the Hitler Youth. He later joined an anti-aircraft artillery unit as an assistant. Before the advance of the allied troops and the German rout, the young soldier deserted and returned to his house. That did not prevent him from being interned for a few months in a prisoner of war camp.
Ratzinger developed an early religious vocation. After the war he entered the seminary in Traunstein, together with his brother Georg, who would also become a priest. Both were ordained in Munich in June 1951. The future pope, a very studious and thoughtful man, continued his theological training and received his doctorate with a thesis on Saint Augustine in 1953. Five years later he would become a professor at the University of Freising, first stage of a brilliant journey through other German universities.
During the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Ratzinger acted as a consultant to Cardinal Frings of Cologne. At that time he earned a reputation as a reformer and collaborated with theologians such as Hans Küng, from whom he would later distance himself. It was above all the events of May 1968 and the entire moral philosophy and change of customs that surrounded the protest movement that pushed Ratzinger to adopt more conservative attitudes and to consider that the traditional principles of Catholicism should be preserved, in the face of the danger of completely lose the ethical compass.
Despite his little pastoral experience, Paul VI named Ratzinger Archbishop of Munich and Freising in March 1977. Only three months later he would be promoted to cardinal. From that period he is accused of not having acted fully in the face of a pedophilia scandal, although that was the general pattern of the Church at that time. In November 1981, John Paul II named him prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the former Inquisition - a position of great power in Rome. From that position, Cardinal Ratzinger defended the traditional doctrine on issues such as contraceptives, homosexuality or the relationship with other Christian faiths. He faced representatives of liberation theology, such as Leonardo Boff and Jon Sobrino, and established the idea that salvation can only be achieved from within the Catholic Church. At the head of the congregation, he was responsible for dealing with sexual abuse. Hence, even as Pope, he was highly criticized from some quarters for the insufficient zeal that he had shown, in the past, to pursue the phenomenon of ecclesiastical pedophilia. On the death of John Paul II, Ratzinger appeared as the natural successor. His age then -78 years old- was an obstacle that did not stop him. The conclave elected him pope on the second day, after four votes. It was April 19, 2005.
After a year of grace, Benedict XVI experienced his first major crisis during a visit to his country, Germany. In a master class in Regensburg, he read a text on Muhammad and Islam that was immediately interpreted as a generic insult to Muslims. After this episode there were several disagreements with the Jews. He was very irritated that he lifted the excommunication of the Lefebvian fundamentalist bishop – and denier of the Shoah – Richard Williamson. He also did not like the Jews to recover a Good Friday prayer that they consider offensive.
The most serious crisis was the scandal of the pedophile clerics, a poisoned inheritance in which, for years, revelations followed one another like periodic delayed-effect bombs. The question accompanied him during several international trips. Benedict XVI – pressured by a hard core of cardinals – had a hard time making mea culpa, although in the end he had no other choice. He wrote a letter to the Catholics of Ireland, one of the countries most convulsed by the scandal, and clamped down on the Legionaries of Christ.
Sexual morality was another difficult issue for Ratzinger. In March 2009, during a trip to Cameroon, he assured that condoms, instead of stopping AIDS, aggravated the epidemic. Years later, in an interview for a book, she corrected herself and came to accept condoms for men who practice prostitution. Already in the twilight of his pontificate, the Vatileaks scandal – the theft of confidential documents by the papal butler – exposed infighting and shadows of corruption. No cardinal of the curia was ousted. The scapegoats were the butler and a computer technician. The old guard knew how to entrench well.
The number one geopolitical problem that the Holy See faced during the pontificate of Benedict XVI was the harassment of Christians, especially in the Middle East and Asia, when they are a minority in Muslim countries. Perhaps it was not by chance that his last international trip took him precisely to Lebanon, in September 2012, the country in the Middle East with the largest Christian community.
Benedict XVI wrote three encyclicals: 'Deus caritas est' (God is love), Spe Salvi' (Saved by hope) and 'Caritas in veritate' (Love in truth). The third, published in 2009, was the most important. He updated the social doctrine of the church and criticized an economic system that neglects ethics and people. After his resignation, he and Francis jointly published 'Lumen fidei' (The Light of Faith') on the three theological virtues: faith, hope and love.
As pope, Joseph Ratzinger made 24 international trips. He was three times in Spain (2006, 2010 and 2011). On the second occasion he visited Santiago de Compostela and Barcelona, where he consecrated the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia. Germany was also his destination on three occasions, the last in 2011. The visit to Mexico and Cuba, in March 2012, was very tiring. Later it was learned that he had fallen during the trip and that his physical condition made him think about his inevitable resignation.
After his resignation, as Pope emeritus, Benedict XVI withdrew to an old convent in the Vatican compound, although he maintained some activity and meetings as long as his health permitted, and continued to publish some texts, despite having promised to remain silent. and to maintain total loyalty to Francis. These sporadic positions were delicate situations, due to the risk of contrasting his opinion with that of his successor, and of giving wings to conservative sectors that wanted to use the emeritus pope as their banner. The most critical moment occurred last January, when he was credited with co-authoring a book, along with Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, in which celibacy was strongly defended and an attempt was made to stop the possibility of ordaining married men in the Amazon. . Later it was learned that Benedict XVI was probably no longer in a position to participate in the writing of the work and that it was Sarah and the private secretary of the Pope emeritus, the German Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who used the figure of Ratzinger for a maneuver of internal pressure that, in the end, paid off, as Francisco renounced opening the spigot to abolish celibacy. His desire for orthodoxy, then, worked to the end, even if it was indirectly.
