Pope Benedict XVI Leaves Vatican Amid Power Struggles, Betrayals
By Sandro Contenta
If God works in mysterious ways, then the Vatican has long been meticulous about following His example. The Holy See’s pronouncements on Catholic doctrine claim the missile-like clarity of truth. But its politics and workings are monuments to obscurity. Centuries of secrecy and intrigue turn even the most historic events into exercises in uncertainty. On Monday, when Pope Benedict made one of the biggest Vatican announcements in 600 years — his resignation — he did it exclusively in Latin, a dead language only one journalist in attendance understood. Don’t expect more clarity when cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel to secretly vote for a new pope. After each vote, chemicals will be used to turn smoke from a small rooftop chimney black, the signal of voting deadlock, or white, the fumes of success. In 2005, when German Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI, the smoke came out grey, leaving tens of thousands in St. Peter’s Square baffled for minutes. This revelling in cryptology has long taught Vatican watchers to take nothing at face value. Circumstances are now so extraordinary — the first pope to resign since 1415 — that even cardinals, the princes of the Church, don’t know what to make of it. For clues, all turn to the public statements of the 85-year-old pontiff as he approaches abdication on Feb. 28. The parsing of his words and actions has begun in earnest. It kicked off with the historic announcement on Monday, when Benedict said he was too old and weak to do the job. The challenges facing the church, he added, require a pope with “strength of body and mind.” When the shock subsided, many saw in those words Benedict’s profile for a new pope — the younger the better. Cardinals in their 60s or younger, including Canada’s Marc Ouellet, the Philippines’ Luis Tagle, Ghana’s Peter Turkson and Argentina’s Leonardo Sandri, seemed to have been given a boost. The resignation was a radical act by a pope anchored in tradition. Progressives in the Church rejoiced. They’ve spent years fighting the centralization of power in Rome. Suddenly, the man they accuse of reinforcing the Vatican’s rigid hierarchy dramatically weakened the papal office. If an infallible pope can abdicate for age or ill health, why not for scandal or mismanagement? Why not from a palace coup or popular revolt? Some conservatives were not pleased. Stanislaw Cardinal Dziwisz, who was private secretary to the late Pope John Paul II, noted that Benedict’s predecessor stayed in his job despite great physical suffering. “One doesn’t come down from the cross,” Dziwisz said. Others were quick to recall what now struck them as an omen: in 2009, while visiting the earthquake-ravaged Italian city of L’Aquila, Benedict left his papal pallium — a wool band worn around his neck — on the grave of Celestine V, a pope who abdicated 1294. Celestine’s successor feared the mere presence of a retired pope could challenge his authority. So he had him imprisoned and, some speculate, killed. The last pope to retire, in 1415, agreed not to leave a town 300 kilometres northeast of Rome. The Vatican has no idea what title to give a retired Vicar of Christ. The retired Benedict will live in a converted convent in the Vatican gardens, and Church officials insist he won’t meddle in his successor’s affairs. Yet on Thursday, the Vatican confirmed that Benedict will have a direct link to the new pope. His trusted private secretary, Monsignor Georg Ganswein, will live with the retired pope while continuing his job as prefect of the papal household for the new pope. Speaking to thousands of priests that day, Benedict’s words suggested reassurance or alarm, depending on how one chose to interpret them. “Even if I am withdrawing into prayer,” he said, “I will always be close to all of you and I am sure that you will be close to me, even if I remain hidden to the world.” Leaks during the week fuelled the storyline of a frail Pope calling it quits. The world learned that he has a pacemaker, which recently required new batteries. L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said Benedict decided to retire after an exhausting trip to Mexico and Cuba in March 2012. The Vatican confirmed Thursday that in Mexico, the Pope banged his head on a sink, staining his hair, pillow and carpet with blood. Hard to overlook, however, is the fact that Benedict chose the start of Lent to announce his abdication, a time of penitence and cleansing in the Christian calendar. In his Ash Wednesday homily, he made clear the Church has much to repent. He lamented a Catholic Church that shows a “sometimes disfigured” face. “I think in particular of sins against the unity of the Church, and divisions within the body of the Church,” added Benedict, often described as a “teaching pope” for his theological clarity. He stressed that Jesus Christ “denounces religious hypocrisy, ways of acting meant to impress others and to garner applause and approval. The true disciple serves not himself or the ‘public,’ but his Lord, simply and generously.” Francesco Merlo, a senior writer with the Roman daily La Repubblica, compared the scolding to Benedict having “publicly beaten with a stick” the Vatican hierarchy. The suffering caused by pedophile priests was surely on the Pope’s mind. So, too, undoubtedly, was the growing revolt by reform-minded priests and nuns in Europe and the U.S., who want a Church more responsive to the grassroots, on issues ranging from sexuality to the ordination of women. Much of the battle has been over how to interpret the reforms of Vatican II, an extraordinary Church council that ran from 1962 to 1965. Benedict, who took part in the council, placed his papacy firmly on the conservative side of that debate. But since his resignation, observers have noted a more reformist shift. At one point he lauded Dorothy Day, an American who established the Catholic Worker movement in the 1930s, which protested regularly against war and poverty. Her social activism was a precursor to the liberation theology of priests who fought injustice in Latin America decades later — priests whose leaders Ratzinger silenced while he was the Vatican’s doctrinal enforcer. Abdication seems to have liberated Benedict. At the same time, blows he suffered from conservative allies within his own administration must still sting. Early in 2012, his papacy was undermined by the leaking of a series of Vatican documents. They included private letters to the Pope complaining of corruption and cronyism in the awarding of Vatican contracts. Allegations of money-laundering at the Vatican’s bank were reignited. A confidential letter from a Vatican official described a presumed plot to kill Benedict and discussed his potential successor. Other leaks linked the murder-suicide of two Vatican Swiss guards in the 1980s to the kidnapping of a 15-year-old Vatican resident, the attempted murder of Pope John Paul II and the controversial burial in a Roman Catholic basilica of Enrico De Pedis, one of Italy’s most notorious gangsters. The Pope’s butler was eventually convicted of stealing the documents. An internal investigation of the leaks has not been made public, and speculation persists that the butler didn’t act alone. “It was a dagger to Benedict’s soul,” a source with access to someone close to the pontiff told the Star, referring to the internal power struggle believed to have resulted in the leaks. The combatants are two Italians — Angelo Cardinal Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, and Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state. How their dispute will impact the conclave of 117 voting cardinals is unclear. Will Italian cardinals, a quarter of the total number, put the power struggle behind them and coalesce around a candidate? Will the eight German cardinals hold grudges against those identified with a camp that helped make the papacy of one of their own tumultuous, if not miserable? Many will continue looking for signs as the conclave approaches. For now, they point to a bombshell decision made by an old and seemingly fed-up Pope.
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