Professor Pope Seeks Convent Refuge after Scandal-hit Papacy

By Flavia Krause-Jackson
San Francisco Chronicle
March 1, 2013

http://www.sfgate.com/business/bloomberg/article/Professor-Pope-Seeks-Convent-Refuge-After-4319813.php

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- Pope Benedict XVI’s life began in a picturesque Bavarian hamlet near Adolf Hitler’s birthplace. He will see out his days at a small Vatican monastery called “The Mother of the Church.”

Joseph Ratzinger, who at age 5 told his father he wanted to be a cardinal, will leave a mixed legacy after becoming the first Roman Catholic pontiff in 600 years to relinquish power, religious scholars from Rome to the U.S. said. The pope left the Vatican by helicopter for the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. His pontificate came to an end at 8 p.m. in Rome yesterday, when his Swiss guards were replaced by Vatican police at the palace and the Holy See’s flag was lowered.

While celebrated for theological tracts including books on the life of Jesus Christ, Benedict’s leadership of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics was also scarred by scandals involving priestly child abuse and leaked papal documents. His parting gift to the next pontiff is a secret file on the case called “Vatileaks,” which Italian media say divulges a network of sex and graft in the church. The reports “don’t correspond to reality,” according to the Holy See.

“He leaves a church in crisis in various ways: from internal governance, to low morale, the sexual abuse, the loss of young people, all the older ones that have left, the evangelicals encroaching and secularists all over,” said historian R. Scott Appleby, director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Secret Vote

Benedict used his final day as pope to greet some of the cardinals who will choose his successor. The cardinals will begin meeting on March 4 to discuss church issues and a date for the vote known as the conclave, Italian newswire Ansa reported today. The secret election in the Sistine Chapel, beneath Michelangelo’s fresco of God breathing life into Adam, will probably commence before March 15, the Vatican has said.

History will remember Benedict for the unique manner in which he quit on Feb. 11. In a hall packed with top Vatican officials, the shy scholar quietly read out his resignation in Latin. His monotone voice masked the significance of his words to all but a few, such as an Ansa reporter who used her knowledge of Rome’s ancient language to break the story.

It was a fitting end to an eight-year papacy marked by a discomfort with adapting to modern times. Exactly two months prior, Benedict’s shaky fingers had to be guided over an iPad as he dispatched his first tweet to cyberspace under @pontifex. The account will be deactivated, the Vatican said yesterday.

Lord ‘Sleeping’

As he basked in applause and tears from pilgrims gathered Feb. 27 for his final general audience, Benedict summed up his papacy. There were moments of “joy and light” as well as times when “it seemed like the Lord was sleeping,” he told an estimated 150,000 people in St. Peter’s Square.

The first pope elected in the 21st century, Benedict sought to rehabilitate a church under attack for failing to punish pedophile priests and allegedly covering up evidence. It wasn’t the only disgrace to befall the conservative theologian, who appeared better suited to penning Latin encyclicals than to the day-to-day running of his millennia-old institution.

Succeeding a revered pope who was swiftly put on the path to sainthood, Benedict couldn’t match John Paul II’s charisma. He was also saddled with a legacy of priestly sex abuse that his Polish predecessor had failed to fully confront.

A decade after first surfacing in the U.S. and soon after Benedict’s election, global allegations of sexual violence by clergy emerged from Ireland to his native Germany.

Sexual Abuse

Initially slow to respond to public outrage, the pope faced unprecedented scrutiny as court records highlighted the church’s mishandling of sexual abuse dating back half a century. Two cases involved Benedict before he became pope.