His dramatic exit paved the way for Pope Francis' election and created the unprecedented arrangement of two popes, living side-by-side in the Vatican gardens.
The intellectual German theologian, whose mission was to reawaken Christianity in a secularized and indifferent Europe, was forced to shoulder the brunt of the sex abuse scandal that festered unattended under St. John Paul II. Then, as he planned to make a quiet exit from the papacy, another scandal erupted when his own butler stole his personal papers and gave them to a journalist — leading to revelations that laid bare the need for a reformer pope to clean up the Vatican’s act.
It was a path that in many ways was reversed by his successor, Francis, whose mercy-over-morals priorities alienated the traditionalists who had been so indulged by Benedict. Like his predecessor, Benedict made reaching out to Jews a hallmark of his papacy. His first official act as pope was a letter to Rome’s Jewish community and he became the second pope in history, after John Paul, to enter a synagogue.Article content
Benedict’s relations with the Muslim world were also a mixed bag. He riled Muslims with a speech in September 2006 — five years after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States — in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman,” particularly his command to spread the faith “by the sword.”
As soon as he was elected, Benedict moved decisively on a few select fronts: He made clear early on that he wanted to re-establish diplomatic relations with China that were severed in 1951. He wrote a landmark letter to the 12 million Chinese faithful in 2007, urging them to unite under Rome’s wing. That letter helped pave the way for Francis to seal a controversial deal with Beijing over bishop appointments in 2018.
At the time, it was the greatest crisis in the Catholic Church in decades, though its re-eruption in 2018 seemed to have eclipsed even that, given Francis’ own failures and missteps.Article content In fact, it was the then-Cardinal Ratzinger who took the revolutionary decision in 2001 to assume responsibility for processing those cases after he realized bishops around the world weren’t punishing abusers but were just moving them from parish to parish where they could rape again.Article content
But Benedict never admitted to any Vatican failure on abuse, and much to the dismay of victims, he never took action against bishops who ignored or covered up the abuse of their priests and moved known pedophiles around to abuse again. Once the “Vatileaks” scandal was resolved, Benedict felt free to make the decision he had hinted at previously but that was extraordinary all the same: On Feb. 11, 2013, he announced that he would resign rather than die in office as all his predecessors had done for almost six centuries.
He made his last public appearances as pope in February 2013 and then, on the last day of the month, boarded a helicopter for the papal summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo, to sit out the conclave that elected Francis, in private. He only returned to the Vatican months later, after Francis was fully installed.Article content
“For the century to come, I think that none of Benedict’s successors will feel morally obliged to remain until their death,” said Paris Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois on the day the resignation was announced.Article content As John Paul’s right-hand man, he had been a favorite going into the vote and was selected in the fastest conclave in a century: Just about 24 hours after the voting began, white smoke curled from the Sistine Chapel chimney at 5:50 p.m. to announce “Habemus Papam!”Article content
Born April 16, 1927, in Marktl Am Inn, in Bavaria, Benedict wrote in his memoirs of being enlisted in the Nazi youth movement against his will in 1941, when he was 14 and membership was compulsory. He deserted the German army in April 1945, the waning days of the war.