Pope Francis has been the head of the Catholic Church for almost 10 years, but he has only been the only pope in the Vatican since Saturday.
The death of Pope Benedict XVI. Retired after a decade has completed an extraordinary arrangement that helped define the current pontificate. While Pope Francis has already taken a markedly different path than his predecessor, he may feel even freer to do so now.
Benedict’s presence in smiling and mostly silent obedience to his successor was, for many conservatives, a reassuring sign of continuity in church leadership and thus support for Pope Francis. But that made Benedict’s occasional public statements all the more influential, particularly when they hinted at a departure from the current Pope’s approach to matters such as clerical sexual abuse and interfaith dialogue. Pope Francis, emphasizing his esteem for his predecessor, had an interest in avoiding explicit disagreements.
According to Cardinal Joseph Zen, a former bishop of Hong Kong who has criticized the current pope’s rapprochement with China, Benedict has had a reluctant influence on Pope Francis on more than one occasion. In particular, he cites Pope Francis’ decision in 2020 not to make priestly ordination easier for married men, after Benedict defended the tradition of clerical celibacy in his contribution to a book on the subject.
“Someone said that after his resignation, Pope Benedict should have kept quiet and not caused confusion in the Church. Rather the opposite seems to me: precisely because there is confusion in the Church, a pope emeritus, like every bishop and cardinal, as long as he is strong and sane, must carry out his duty as successor of the apostles to defend the healthy tradition of the church ‘ Cardinal Zen wrote on his personal website on Tuesday. “At crucial moments, even Pope Francis accepted this contribution of his predecessor when defending the priestly celibacy of the Roman Church.”
Pope Francis is also now freer to create a protocol for retired popes to make it clearer that there is only one pope at a time, according to Rev. Thomas Reese, author of Inside the Vatican. Critics from left and right have said clearer rules are needed to avoid confusion over church leadership.
“He couldn’t do it while Benedict was alive because it would have been seen as criticism of Benedict and demeaning if the retired Pope had been told to stop wearing white, not to call himself Pope and go back to his baptismal name.” ‘ said Father Reese.
Benedict consistently refrained from publicly criticizing his successor, which may have exerted a reticent influence on some of his conservative supporters that has now been reversed with his death.
One of the late Pope’s closest confidants has already confirmed that Benedict privately disapproved of Pope Francis’ 2021 decision to restrict the use of the traditional Latin Mass, largely reversing Benedict’s lifting of restrictions in 2007.
“It hit him pretty hard. Pope Benedict read [Francis’ decree] with pain in his heart because he wanted to bring inner peace to those who simply found a home in the old Mass,” Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Benedikt’s private secretary, told a website close to the German Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost in an The interview was aired on released on Saturday, the anniversary of the retired pope’s death, although it was recorded months earlier.
Though Benedict is gone, he could still challenge Pope Francis and his allies in the realm of ideas. Benedict’s death and associated commemorations could prompt renewed public interest in his teachings, some of which are clearly at odds with those of Pope Francis, said Sandro Magister, who writes about the Vatican for Italian magazine L’Espresso.
“Francis cannot rid himself of the legacy of his predecessor, even though his predecessor is now dead, because that legacy lives on as long as his heirs know how to interpret and apply it,” said Mr. Magister.
Benedict advocated fighting what he called a contemporary “dictatorship of relativism.” His emphasis on moral absolutes and defined truths stands in sharp contrast to much of Pope Francis’ agenda, including his greater leniency on homosexuality, contraception and divorce, Magister says.
Benedict’s ideas have had a major impact on Catholic conservatives in the United States, and especially on younger clergy there.
Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego, a leading progressive ally of Pope Francis among U.S. bishops, recently said that concerns about relativism, which reflect the influence of Benedict’s thinking, explain why a 2021 poll found that Half of younger American priests disapproved of Pope Francis, who is more willing than Benedict to allow gray areas on contentious issues.
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Church related news
George Pell dies aged 81: Most senior Australian to ever serve the Catholic Church was chatting with doctors after hip operation in Rome when he went into sudden cardiac arrest
Cardinal George Pell has died in Rome at the age of 81 after complications from hip replacement surgery, the Vatican has confirmed.
The Cardinal is reported to have successfully undergone the operation and was chatting with his anaesthetist when he went into sudden cardiac arrest.
Medics were unable to revive him.
His death comes just days after he made his public appearance at the funeral of Pope Benedict in Rome last week.
He was ordained a priest in 1966, became a bishop in 1987, and was appointed Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996 and Archbishop of Sydney in 2001 before was made a cardinal in 2003.
But Cardinal Pell was at the centre of sex abuse allegations for almost two decades and in 2018 he was convicted of historical incidents which he strenuously denied.
It was claimed in court that in 1996, while still dressed in his robes after celebrating Sunday mass, he had exposed himself and masturbated in front of one 13-year-old choirboy, then raped that boy's 13-year-old friend.
Pell called those claims a 'product of fantasy' and 'absolute rubbish' but he served 404 days in prison of a six year jail sentence before the conviction was overturned on appeal by the High Court of Australia in 2020.
ABC journalist Louise Milligan who exposed the criminal allegations against the cardinal said the death would be 'triggering' for his alleged victims.
'George Pell is dead. This will be a very triggering day for a lot of people,' said Milligan, a reporter for the ABC's Four Corners program.
'Thinking of them'
Prior to the court case he was one of the highest ranked cardinals in the Vatican after he impressed church leaders with his handling of historical allegations of child sexual abuse by priests.
As Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996, he established the 'Melbourne Response' to handle and investigate child sex abuse complaints which was hailed as a world-first.
In 2013 he was appointed as a member of the Council of Cardinals by Pope Francis and overhauled the Church's finances as Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy.
However Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that he knew of child sexual abuse by clergy by the 1970s but did not take adequate action to address it.
Ballarat-born Pell said at the time he was 'surprised' by the findings and insisted the commission's views were 'not supported by evidence'.
He had returned to the Vatican in 2020 after his convictions were overturned and prayed over the body of Pope Benedict XVI in St Peter's Basilica last week.
In his final interview, Cardinal Pell spoke emotionally about the death of the Pope who resigned from the role in 2013 at the age of 85 because of his ill health.
'I was very sad,' Cardinal Pell said. 'As a matter of fact, I was surprised how sad I was
'I knew he was sick and I knew he was dying.
'[But]I was rather pleased as I thought I had heard he was rallying and was disconcerting the experts and going to live a little but longer.
'I'd known him well enough, admired what he was about. I thought he was very good for the church.
'It was sad to see another wonderful stage in church history ending.'
Dr Miles Pattenden of Australian Catholic University said the cardinal's death would come as 'a great shock to all Australian Catholics' but said he was a divisive figure.
'It was a very unexpected death - we knew Cardinal Pell was a fairly old man, but there had been no news about him being in ill health,' he told ABC News.
'So this is a very sad day for many people.'
But he added: 'George Pell was one of the most conservative figures of his generation and in the global church.