A scandal erupted because Vigano manipulated a photograph of Benedict’s letter declining to endorse the project to make it seem like he was on board with it. Francis reluctantly accepted Vigano’s resignation in the aftermath.
The other main strain in relations came two years later, when Benedict co-authored a book with a Francis critic affirming the need for priests to remain celibate, precisely at the time that Francis was considering allowing married men to be ordained to alleviate a priest shortage in the Amazon.
A previous pope-theologian weighing in on an issue that was currently under study by the current pope was the nightmare scenario of a “parallel magisterium” predicted by canon lawyers and theologians in 2013. They faulted Benedict’s decision to retire then and especially his choice to keep the white cassock of the papacy and call himself “Emeritus Pope” rather than revert back to his birth name.
The book episode, Franco writes, was something of the final straw and an epilogue to the Vigano debacle, both of which saw Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, Benedict’s longtime secretary, as a key behind-the-scenes player. Gaenswein had served as a bridge between the two popes by also acting as head of Francis’ papal household. But after the 2020 book disaster, Francis removed him as prefect of the papal household, though he retains the title and remains in charge of The Monastery and Benedict’s team.
“Francis, understandably irritated, was pushed by his allies to cut the ambiguous umbilical cord with that monsignor (Gaenswein) who moved as easily in the Vatican halls as he did in the salons of the aristocracy,” Franco writes.
Benedict had said he was retiring to a lifetime of prayer because he no longer had the strength of body or mind to carry on the rigors and travel of the 21st-century papacy. Gaenswein told Vatican News on his birthday on April 16 that Benedict “is in good spirits, naturally he is physically relatively weak and fragile, but rather lucid.”
His 95th birthday falls as Francis, who in December turned 85, is himself slowing down: Francis’ bad knee has made walking, stairs and getting up from his chair painful, and he can no longer stand for long periods of time. But he nevertheless has a grueling travel schedule planned for the coming months and has shown no indication he plans to retire anytime soon.
This article originally appeared on APNews.com.
