Second Act
By Howard Chua-Eoan
The pilgrimage had seemed rather random, but its significance is finally clear. On April 28, 2009, while visiting the earthquake-stricken city of L'Aquila in central Italy, Benedict XVI paid a visit to the nearby tomb of Celestine V, a 13th century Pope who reigned for only five months. After pausing in silent prayer, Benedict left his predecessor a gift: his pallium, a liturgical vestment he received when he started his pontificate in 2005. Celestine's claim to fame--and infamy--was his resignation from the office of the papacy, choosing instead to return to a hermit's life. For that, the Roman Catholic Church eventually made him a saint. For the same act--the so-called Great Refusal--Dante Alighieri damned Celestine to the torments of the Inferno. Benedict may well have reflected on Celestine's dual fate before announcing, two days before Lent, that he would resign on Feb. 28. "The Pope must have felt very lonely in taking this decision," says a well-placed member of the Curia, the secretive bureaucracy that runs the Vatican. "After all, there is no one higher up than him to defer the choice to. Above him, there is only God." The papal announcement, delivered in Latin, stunned the church. Here was a Pope, in the ultimate exercise of free will, giving up his throne and his role as the Vicar of Christ. The last time that happened was 1415, when Gregory VII resigned as part of a negotiated deal to end the schism that had divided the church between rival papacies for close to 40 years. There is no existential crisis to resolve this time. But Benedict's abdication may transform the church he has ruled for almost eight years of both intractable controversy and burgeoning growth. He cited his physical condition, at age 85, as a reason for stepping down, and his brother Georg indicated that doctors have advised the Pontiff to give up transoceanic flights. The Pope has lived with a pacemaker since before ascending to the throne, and the Vatican acknowledged that its battery was recently replaced as part of regular maintenance. But unless Benedict's health deteriorates rapidly, he will not only see the election of his successor but also watch the new Pontiff take his first steps in the job. That convergence is likely to have huge implications--and perhaps complications. Though he couched his declaration as an exercise in Christian humility--a confession of human frailty from one of the most powerful men on the planet--the act is also one of great political opportunity, one that may reform the way the church is governed even as it preserves Benedict's conservative agenda. In his way, Benedict may be the last Pope of a model that the world is familiar with--the kind expected to serve till death--and the first in what could be a dramatic new way of administering a spiritual empire of more than 1 billion living souls. The Über-Pope The Papacy of benedict XVI will likely pale in comparison to that of his predecessor, the charismatic John Paul II--the Polish-born Pontiff who faced down the communist bloc and contributed to its collapse and whose global travels revitalized the appeal of the Catholic Church. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI helped his friend John Paul run the Vatican as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith--the historical successor to the Holy Office of the Inquisition. As John Paul's successor, the German-born Pope inherited the great Pontiff's messes, including, most significantly, the cover-ups of the priestly molestation cases that continue to haunt the church around the world. He quickly caused a few rumbles of his own: verbal gaffes that riled Muslims and Jews, a declaration that condoms would not help counter the AIDS crisis in Africa. But Benedict's reputation was based on erudition and efficiency, and his papacy has managed to clarify and anchor many of John Paul's beliefs in carefully thought-out encyclicals and policies--including conservative doctrines on contraception and the role of women in the church that have alienated liberal Catholics in the U.S. and Europe. Still, Benedict's departure may be his--and John Paul's--greatest legacy, a fundamental change to the succession of St. Peter. Ratzinger ran a critical sector of the Vatican hierarchy while John Paul, who died on April 2, 2005, lingered in extremis as the absolute ruler of the Catholic Church. His last years were excruciating, as the once athletic Pontiff slowly and publicly withered away in the throes of what was believed to be Parkinson's disease. Since then, Benedict has emphatically asserted that a Pope may resign if, as he said in Light of the World, a collection of his wide-ranging interviews with the journalist Peter Seewald published in 2010, "he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office." In that case, Benedict said, "he has a right and, under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign." But he added, "One can resign at a peaceful moment or when one simply cannot go on. But one must not run away from danger and say someone else should do it." Benedict is stepping down, but it is quite possible that he is entering a phase of even greater influence without having to deal with the onerous duties and hazards of the papacy. Past discussions of papal resignation presumed a Pontiff with serious health problems--as John Paul II painfully exemplified. But while Benedict has been slowed by age, he has not been incapacitated by it. And even after resigning, he is likely to exude, if not exert, influence by virtue of prestige. It will be a rare moment in history when a Pope has to share the stage with a Pope emeritus--one with a reputation for intellectual acuity, daunting scholarship and, most intimidating of all, the ultimate insider's knowledge of the bureaucracy. Indeed, the social dynamic of a retired Pope living a short distance from the reigning one--or at least a mobile-phone call away--is a situation no one really quite knows how to handle. Who has precedence when they are both in the same room? Presumably, the ex-Pope will still have the intellectual acumen that led the Cardinals to elect him in the first place, a mind empowered with the God-given talent to discern proper doctrine, infallible or otherwise. Has the power of that intellection been vacated as well? And will a church of believers who invested so much in the persona of the former and still living Pope be able to share its enthusiasm with the new Pontiff? "The former Pope in the Vatican will be a formidable weight on the shoulder of his successor," says Andrea Tornielli, Vatican correspondent for La Stampa and a historian. Decisions on matters as weighty as foreign travel and the subjects of encyclicals to the appointment of papal courtiers, Curia bureaucrats and household staff could be affected. The new Pope will be indebted to Benedict XVI. The conclave that will elect a successor is scheduled to start on March 15, and even though he won't be in the Sistine Chapel when the voting takes place, Benedict is bound to influence the outcome. This sort of informal influence has proved powerful in other cultures--particularly premodern Japan, where retired shoguns and Emperors continued to make pivotal decisions. Thus, just by watching from the sidelines, Ratzinger will be subtly able to champion his conservative theological and social policies--an über-Pope of sorts. Says Tornielli: "I can hardly imagine Ratzinger's successor, with Ratzinger still living, reversing one of Ratzinger's decisions. Not because he is still [in the Vatican] but because he is still alive. It opens a whole range of problems that are not so easily resolved." The resulting continuity of the old Pope's agenda may contribute to the future shape of the global Catholic Church, the consistency of its theology and social policies and how future Popes will rule in this new century. Benedict's Specifications By choosing to step down, benedict has introduced a whole new calculus into the choice of the next Pope. "I think the Cardinals who come here are going to look at the papacy differently because of this," says John Thavis, former Rome bureau chief for Catholic News Service, the news agency of U.S. bishops. "It doesn't mean that every Pope will have to resign at age 85, but it will mean a future Pope might resign at age 75. It could bring the Cardinals to look at much younger candidates because they know that resignation is an option." Benedict has also already stacked the deck of the College of Cardinals so that it is likely to elect a new Pope of mind and spirit similar to his. Popes usually hold at most one consistory a year--the ceremony at which they announce the appointment of Cardinals, the prelates who elect a new Pontiff--traditionally when the old one has died. In 2012, the Pope held two consistories, which together helped Benedict raise the number of Cardinals he has created during his reign to 90; 67 of them are eligible to cast ballots for his successor, which is more than half of the 117 who will vote in the next conclave. The Vatican has been very careful to say Benedict will not be meddling in the election of the next Pope. But he doesn't have to do a thing. "People say he will not have an influence on the conclave," says Tornielli. "Of course he will. Cardinals must be free when they choose, but of course they will be less free with [Ratzinger] still living." Even a historic choice from Latin America, Africa or Asia is likely to produce a Pope tailored to the conservatism set in place by Benedict. While every Pope has the opportunity to surprise, the next one will be elected by a conclave trying to divine God's vision while keeping one eye on the retired Pope. Francesco Clementi, author of the 2009 book Vatican City, envisions two scenarios: "A breakaway Pope, an African or Asian, who even if in theological and cultural continuity with Ratzinger will be able to carry out reforms because he is external to the Roman circle; or a continuity Pope, a European who knows how to work the Curia machine and might carry out his reforms with patience and, as it befalls to a young Pope, with time on his side." Benedict's successor will inherit a long list of problems. The wounds from the priest sexual-molestation scandals are deep, and it may take generations to win back once fervently Catholic nations like Ireland. While Benedict did more than John Paul II to try to make amends for the crimes, he was too much a part of the compromised bureaucracy to truly cleanse the organization. Meanwhile, the church's center of gravity is shifting as the number of Catholics grows in Asia (up 11% from 2005 to 2010) and Africa (up 21%). Responding to the social and political demands of Catholics from those continents will be a challenge for a church still comfortably headquartered in Europe. One fascinating development: some of the most fervid volunteers for Benedict's goal of re-evangelizing secular Europe come from the Philippines and several nations in West and Central Africa. Meanwhile, the Vatican faces severe challenges in Latin America, where evangelical Protestantism continues to attract new followers and erode the number of Catholics. According to the polling service Latinobarómetro, Latin American countries were 81% Catholic and only 4% evangelical in 1996. By 2010, Catholics had dropped to 70% while evangelicals had risen to 13%. The Protestantism that has caught on there has a decidedly charismatic flair--one that ironically was inspired by John Paul II's infatuation with the Catholic charismatic movement. However, it was the freewheeling Protestant ministries that successfully capitalized on the trend in Latin America, while Benedict focused on policing attempts by local churches--many with leftist enthusiasms--to alter the Catholic liturgy. Liberal Catholics in the U.S., meanwhile, were just as dissatisfied with many of the messages coming out of Rome. Many--including congregations of American nuns--are beginning to experiment with autonomy, much to the chagrin of the Holy See. The Vatican has faced these challenges either through stern talk and threats of discipline, in the case of the rebel nuns, or Benedict's less than fully realized re-evangelization policy in Europe. Administratively, Benedict has attempted to make the workings of the Vatican Bank more transparent, a move that apparently upset elements of the Curia. Meanwhile, money-laundering investigations of the Holy See's finances by Italian officials have left the Vatican concerned about its sovereignty. That is enough to put the fear of God into St. Peter's. The Pope-Ables I Papabili--"The Pope-Ables"--is the term coined by Italian journalists to describe Cardinals who are likely candidates for the papacy. Some of the favorites coming into the next conclave have remained on the short list since the previous transfer of power: Francis Arinze of Nigeria, now 80; Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, 76; Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, 70. All were made Cardinals by John Paul II in the late Pontiff's quest to broaden the geographic representation of the college. John Paul himself was the first non-Italian to become Pope since the 16th century Dutchman Adrian VI. There are Cardinals who can fit the Benedictine specifications in Africa, Latin America and Asia, continents where the Catholic Church is much healthier than in secularized Europe and North America. Rodríguez of Honduras remains a betting favorite, while Bergoglio may have been eclipsed by another Argentine Cardinal, Leonardo Sandri, 69, who has held several important Vatican posts. Rodríguez and Sandri are relatively young and, in terms of social policy, well within the bounds of Ratzinger's ideology--one that remains consistent with that of John Paul II. Arinze of Nigeria, who has served in the Vatican bureaucracy for years, is still considered Pope-able, though he stepped down from his office in 2008, and semiretirement may make him less attractive in the aftermath of Benedict's abdication. A number of intriguing names have emerged in the days since Benedict's surprise announcement. Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson of Ghana, 64, was appointed to a Vatican post--president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace--in 2009. A scholar of Scripture like the current Pope, Turkson was the point man in the media ruckus after Benedict said condoms were not a solution to the AIDS crisis in Africa, arguing that the Pope's statement had been taken out of context. One minus: in the days after Benedict's announcement, several insiders interpreted Turkson's press interviews as campaigning for the papacy--a big no-no. Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Canada, 68, has worked in South America as well as his native Quebec and is now ensconced in Rome as head of the extremely influential Congregation of Bishops, a post he was given by Benedict in 2010. The Pope also made him president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. Like Benedict, Ouellet believes that the conclusions of the Second Vatican Council of 1962--65 were given too liberal a reading by many Catholics. However, he keeps a very low profile and is not particularly magnetic (though Ratzinger proved that the role of Pope does wonders for a charisma deficit). Says Robert Dennis, vice president of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association: "He has strong ties to the Latin American bishops. And I think that might be actually the most crucial factor when we're talking about a pragmatic reason why he might be elected, because they are a significant voting bloc." The other prominent North American favorite is Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who was elevated to the college in 2012; there is, however, a traditional bias against giving the most powerful job in the church to a citizen of the world's most powerful country. Many people who believe they have insight into the secretive Vatican say the prohibitive favorite is Cardinal Angelo Scola, 71, a theologian and philosopher who was once Patriarch of Venice and was appointed by Benedict to become Archbishop of Milan in 2011. The word from the Holy See is that the large Italian segment of the Vatican bureaucracy--the Curia--would love to see a countryman retake the papacy. Though Scola's job is administering Milan for the church, he also has a few years of Curia experience under his belt. He is, however, associated with the Comunione e Liberazione movement, a conservative lay-Catholic activist group that has supported politicians like former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and has been mired in corruption scandals. Scola has distanced himself from the movement, but the history may return to haunt him come the time of the conclave. As diverse as these men may be, they all have Curia credentials--which is key for any Pope who must maneuver through the bureaucracy. John Paul II was an outsider. But the ascendancy of Benedict--despite his German origins and badly accented Italian--was a win for the Curia because he had become a denizen of the organization in his Vatican job as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Scola, Turkson and Ouellet may be Italian, Ghanaian and Canadian, but they will not be outsiders. Conclaves are known to act in mysterious ways, and the one that begins in March may well surprise the world by choosing someone who does not resemble one of these three. But the parameters have been set to a large degree by Benedict. They will be hard to supersede. The Twilight of Ratzinger For a man known for efficiency, benedict will leave a few things undone. He will not preside over the entire Year of Faith he declared in October; he will not publish an encyclical on faith that he started preparing. Perhaps he just ran out of time--or perhaps these items weren't even supposed to have been on his schedule. Fate intervenes unexpectedly even for Popes. Benedict may have been spurred to consider retirement, says Tornielli, when he fell during the night, away from the eyes of the press, during his March 2012 trip to Mexico and Cuba. By autumn, work was reportedly being done on the former convent in Rome that he would move into after he abdicated. He may have been planning to announce his resignation as early as September 2012. But that turned out to be the height of the so-called Vatileaks scandal, in which an Italian journalist published a book based on documents provided by the Pope's butler. The revelations, which began last February, exacerbated the ongoing Vatican Bank scandal. And from August to October, the legal proceedings against the butler, Paolo Gabriele, absorbed the Vatican. The case must have pained the Pontiff: Gabriele said he was concerned Benedict was not getting the information he needed to run the church. The scandal must have contributed to Benedict's conviction that it was truly time to go. The Pope who will once again become Joseph Ratzinger is not leaving behind a church in deep crisis. But it is not an untroubled one. He must be looking forward to resting from it. Yet even as the Catholic world wonders if a new Pope must constantly look over his shoulder at the old one, Ratzinger must know that he will always share responsibility for the church he leaves behind.
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