Theologian, priest, cardinal - and finally pope: Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict XVI emeritus, has died. A look at his life shows that his time as Supreme Pastor at the Vatican was never what he aspired to. In the end, abuse scandals overshadowed his tenure and retirement.
Joseph Ratzinger is dead. With him dies a churchman who will go down in history: as someone who was also pope in some way, but didn't die as pope. This is characteristic of his life, for it fits the nature of this reserved thinker. Joseph Ratzinger was Pope Benedict XVI for a short span of his long life - almost eight years. But even if this could be described as the high point of this man's career, the role as supreme pastor of the Roman Catholic Church is more like a foreign element in his biography.
Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger was born on April 16, 1927 in the small Bavarian town of Marktl am Inn, the son of a policeman and a cook. The career that would shape his life became apparent early on: Ratzinger was a high achiever as far as academic theology was concerned. At the age of 26, two years after his ordination, he received his doctorate in theology. After some discussions about his habilitation thesis, he took up his first professorship for dogmatics in Freising at the age of 31.
As a young theologian, Joseph Ratzinger left great traces at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which in the Catholic Church is seen as pointing the way for opening up to the world and other religions. At that time, Ratzinger was on the side of the moderate reformers; Above all, he campaigned for the abolition of the Latin mass.
After a long teaching career, he became Archbishop of the Munich-Freising diocese for a few years before his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, appointed him Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1982. Ratzinger held a high office in the Vatican as the "supreme guardian of the faith". During this time, important positions became very clear, which he made strong - and which made it clear that, despite all the will to reform, Ratzinger was always concerned with the one Catholic truth, with the preservation of church doctrine, with the avoidance of heresies.
In many respects Ratzinger was no longer a reformer, on the contrary: he now disciplined theologians who were willing to reform, even people from the time of the Council, with whom he had once been a companion. As far as the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church are concerned, Ratzinger was a traditionalist. This was shown, for example, in his decision as pope in 2007 to allow the Latin mass again, against which he had argued more than 50 years earlier.
Even during this time as archbishop, it became increasingly clear how much Joseph Ratzinger suffered from the tasks that a high office in the Catholic world church entails. He repeatedly asked John Paul II to dismiss him. Instead of being the supreme guardian of the faith, he preferred to go back to Bavaria to write books there. Even when, at the age of 75, he again considered submitting the application for resignation, which is usual at this age, the then Pope waved him off. John Paul II is quoted as saying: "You don't even have to write the letter because I want you to finish."
Against this background, one can perhaps begin to understand how Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger felt on April 19, 2005, when he was elected Bishop of Rome - and thus the new head of the Catholic Church - after the death of the Polish Pope. He, who actually wanted nothing more than to withdraw into his quiet little room to think, pray and write.
Instead, jubilation broke out in his home country over the new pope. As the first German since Hadrian VI. in 1523 Ratzinger ascended the throne of Peter. However, the slight man's discomfort is already noticeable there. No: he never wanted to become pope. His passion for theology, for work at the university and for teaching, for reading and writing - things for which he simply did not have the time as pope was too strong. More than already in his previous task.
Pope Benedict XVI was an academic, a thinker. No maker, no handlebar. Individual episodes of his tenure paint this picture very clearly. As a result, he simply seemed to be overwhelmed by the effect that his statements and decisions as pope had.
First, there is the speech that has become known as the "Pope's Quotation from Regensburg," which triggered a wave of rejection, hatred, and violence in the Muslim world. The trigger was a quote on the role of violence in Islam that Benedict XVI. during a lecture in September 2006. In a lecture hall during a course, in front of a crowd of students, this speech would not have been a problem. But not in the role of Pope, in front of cameras from all over the world, which just can't convey the necessary differentiation of his statements. It thus became clear early on in a particularly hard way that the role change was not easy for the theologian Ratzinger.
This was also reflected in dealing with the Pius Brotherhood when Benedict XVI. in 2009 rehabilitated four bishops of the Brotherhood, including Holocaust denier Richard Williamson. Waves of indignation swept over the Vatican; Everywhere the Catholic Church was attested a serious setback in the Jewish-Christian dialogue as a result of this step. In the Pope's later statement, it becomes clear that he did not have this public dimension in mind when making the decision. For him the whole thing was an internal matter. A thing that was theologically imperative. He was simply overwhelmed by the effectiveness of his decision outside of the Church. One of his critics said at the time: "Up until now, the pope has had no sense or adviser telling him what the political consequences of this or any statement would be."
A look at the handling of another explosive topic shows that this was also the case up to 2022 - especially when he had already left the big stage as "Papa emeritus". During the tenure of Pope Benedict XVI. the exposure of the abuse scandals in the Catholic Church fell. From 2010 onwards, it gradually came to light that children had been abused for decades, that the institution systematically covered up the perpetrators and did not investigate anything. The Munich abuse report, which was published in January 2022 and again brought hundreds of cases to light, ultimately also incriminated Joseph Ratzinger: During his time as archbishop, he did not behave correctly towards known cases of abuse.
Ratzinger, 94 years old at the time the report was published, commented on the allegations. But here, too, what had already been shown in several episodes came to light again: he lacked a feeling for the consequences of his statements. In February 2022, for example, he publicly apologized for "misdemeanors and mistakes that happened during my terms of office and in the places concerned", but at the same time alienated those affected when he then tried to discuss what happened next on more than 80 pages exactly "abuse" is and what is not. Such a treatise seemed important to him - he lacked the sense that it was a slap in the face for those affected. "He still hasn't understood it," countered the representatives of those affected, who have been calling for a systematic review for years.
Benedict XVI is in the history books. probably because he allowed himself salvation and pulled the ripcord on February 11, 2013. After Pope Celestine V in 1294, he was the second pope in history to announce his voluntary resignation. The Catholic Church was thrown out of joint because the routine for such a procedure was lacking. Can a pope simply resign? At least one thing was certain: now that Joseph Ratzinger was Pope himself, there was no one who could have refused his resignation.
And so he just did it. He resigned out of consideration for himself and his health. Because he didn't want to spend the rest of his days as Pope. Joseph Ratzinger wanted to go back to doing what gave him the greatest fulfillment in life: reading, writing and praying. He now wanted to remain silent, he said, and henceforth lived within the Vatican in the Mater Ecclesiae ("Mother of the Church") monastery.
But the "Papa Emeritus", as Ratzinger wanted to be called from now on, did not succeed in remaining silent. He has repeatedly published texts that were understood as a counter-voice to current developments and the universal church under Pope Francis. As early as 2014, he spoke out against allowing remarried divorced people to take communion - a question that was being discussed at the family synod at the time. In 2019 he caused a sensation with steep theses on the abuse cases in the church: The 1968ers and liberal theology are partly responsible for it. Not a word about possible church system problems.
Observers repeatedly discussed the extent to which Benedict was exploited by conservative forces in the Vatican in his final years. Did he end up becoming a puppet? That's not really to be believed. Visitors reported that he was mentally fit to the end, even as his body and voice gradually gave out. It is also not credible that he could not assess how his statements would be perceived as a emeritus head of the church or that each of his words would be weighed in gold and compared with the statements of Francis. He could have just kept silent, as he had intended.
He couldn't. Because here too the melody of his life resounded: Joseph Ratzinger, the theologian. One who was primarily concerned with what he believed to be the truth - not with the consequences of speaking out those views and thoughts. And he didn't want to hold anything back. Not as a university professor, not as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, not as pope - and not as papa emeritus either.
