Vatican Insider

By Paolo Mastrolilli
Tom Heneghan
February 24, 2013

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/26/vatican_insider_pope_conclave_catholic

The last time a pope resigned -- Gregory XII in 1415 -- it was to end a 40-year schism that threatened to tear the church in two. Today, the church faces a crisis that may be no less profound, and it has to do it with the entire world watching. (Gregory didn't have to contend with the Twittersphere.) And while many things remain opaque in the secret and closeted Vatican, one thing we know for sure is that the church faces a fundamental divide that threatens its future far more than the scandals that are dominating front pages.

"This time is different, the crisis is much deeper and more difficult to solve than it appears," an Italian bishop with long experience in the Curia laments. "Catholics are deeply divided between a group of conservatives, constantly looking toward the past that will never come back, and progressives, who pushed themselves too far from any possible compromise with the other group. I don't envy the next pope."

According to sources close to the pope, Benedict XVI resigned because he felt he no longer had the physical and intellectual energy to address the Vatican's problems. These problems started to emerge in the late 1990s,with the revelations of sexual abuse of children by priests in the United States. Church officials hoped the scandal could be contained in America, but soon there were similar reports of abuses and church cover-ups in Ireland, Belgium, Britain, and even Benedict's old parish in Germany. The fallout from the abuse investigations was compounded by other scandals including remarks by Benedict that upset the Muslim community in 2006, the rehabilitation of Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson in 2009, and revelations of money laundering at the Vatican's bank, IOR, last year. If Benedict were an elected politician, it's unlikely his government could have survived.