Benedict XVI helped run the Roman Catholic Church lengthy earlier than his election as pope.
For a lot of the decades-long papacy of his predecessor and mentor, John Paul II, Benedict — who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany — served because the Vatican’s chief doctrinal official. “God’s Rottweiler,” his critics known as him, or “the German shepherd.”
From his highly effective perch as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Religion — as soon as the Holy Workplace liable for the Inquisition — the conservative cleric acted as an enforcer and as a traditionalist compass.
He veered the church away from what he in the end got here to contemplate the liberal overreach of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council within the Nineteen Sixties, which he held liable for a drift away from the reality maintained by custom. He crushed dissent. He helped promote clerics in his and John Paul II’s mould within the Roman curia, the paperwork that runs the church, in addition to in dioceses and orders around the globe.
After John Paul II’s dying in 2005, Benedict gave a robust and defining speech in opposition to the temptation of relativism, delivered earlier than the conclave to decide on the subsequent pope. It was thought of so persuasive that the School of Cardinals selected him to proceed John Paul’s legacy and basically encourage the standard church to make a last-ditch effort in opposition to the rising forces of secularism.
As pope, nonetheless, Benedict — a soft-spoken theologian who beloved cats and taking part in Mozart on the piano — lacked the charisma and media savvy of John Paul.
Virtually instantly, he gave a speech that offended many Muslims. And the sexual abuse scandals that festered below John Paul — at occasions regardless of the warnings of Benedict as a cardinal — exploded on his watch. His efforts to rid the church of what he known as “filth” went a lot additional than John Paul II, however his reluctance to carry bishops accountable for shifting abusive monks round fell far in need of the hopes of victims and critics.
No matter grand ambitions Benedict could have harbored typically appeared overmatched by missteps and moments he failed to satisfy.
Benedict’s best affect on the papacy could have been how he left it.
His sudden resignation, the primary by a pope in additional than 500 years, shocked the church. It additionally opened the door to Pope Francis, a progressive reformer with whom he shared an ungainly, if decorous, cohabitation in a Vatican with two popes.
It additionally set a precedent and broke a taboo. Francis himself has repeatedly mentioned that his personal retirement is on the desk.
