The Secret of Benedict XVI

First published in Italian by Rizzoli, Milan as
Il segreto di Benedetto XVI. Perché è ancora papa
© 2018 Mondadori Libri S.p.A. / Rizzoli, Milan

First published in the USA

by Angelico Press 2019

Copyright © Angelico Press 2019

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Book and cover design

by Michael Schrauzer

Cover photograph

The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI (modified)

© Mazur/www.thepapalvisit.org.uk

If the Church were to be removed from the world,

in a short time the world would end.

—John Henry Newman

They call to me from Seir:

Watchman, how much longer the night?

Watchman, how much longer the night?

Isaiah 21:11

CONTENTS

PART ONE
The Mystical, Economic, and Political Origin of the Drama

1   Church and Empire, As During the Arian Crisis

2   Who Wanted a Revolution in the Church (And Why)

PART TWO
That Which Is Not Understood: Benedict Is Pope Forever

3   The (Non) Resignation of the Papacy

4   The (True) Power of the Pope (Emeritus)

PART THREE
Fatima and the Last Pope

5   The Power of the Powerless

6   “Everything is possible”

CONCLUSION

PART ONE
The Mystical, Economic,
and Political Origin
of the Drama

Finally, there came a time when everything that men had considered as inalienable became an object of exchange, of traffic, and could be alienated. This is the time when the very things which till then had been communicated, but never exchanged; given, but never sold; acquired, but never bought — virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc.—when everything, in short, passed into commerce. It is the time of general corruption, of universal venality, or, to speak in terms of political economy, the time when everything, moral or physical, having become a marketable value, is brought to the market to be assessed at its truest value.

— Karl Marx,

The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), ch. 1

It forced all the people, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to be given a stamped image on their right hands and foreheads, so that no one could buy or sell except one who had the stamped image of the beast’s name or the number that stood for its name. Wisdom is needed here; one who understands can calculate the number of the beast, for it is a number that stands for a person. His number is six hundred and sixty-six.

Revelation 13:16–18

1
Church and Empire,
As During the Arian Crisis

Total darkness occurs when everyone closes their eyes.

— Rastko Zakić

“HOLY MOTHER CHURCH IS FACING A CRISIS without precedent in all of her history,” writes Father Serafino M. Lanzetta. Using the same image, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., writing in the Washington Times, says, “It is time for Pope Francis to acknowledge that he has presided over the Catholic Church in a time of unparalleled crisis.”1

The painful succession of abuse scandals that is overwhelming her— united to a Vatican administration that will not confront the problem — is only the tip of the iceberg of a huge spiritual confusion. The drama, which is much more vast and profound, is centered on the crisis of credibility of the papacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, source of immense confusion among the faithful, and around the looming risk of deviations from Catholic doctrine that could lead Christianity into apostasy and schism.

In the background of all of this there is the traumatic event of the resignation of Benedict XVI. Cardinal Walter Brandmüller has written that “the resignation of a pope presupposes — and at the same time creates — a most dangerous situation for the Church.”2 But the tragic situation in which the Catholic Church finds herself does not concern Catholics only: it concerns our entire society. It is not by accident that the crisis of the Church coincides with a moment of disturbing unrest on the spiritual, cultural, and civil level, as well as the geopolitical one.

In my book La profezia finale [The Final Prophecy] I gathered together the many supernatural warnings given to the Church and to the world by means of apparitions and prophecies about the times we live in, which appears to be truly decisive for the history of humanity. The Church, through her daily Eucharistic Sacrifice, is the great exorcism that prevents Evil from sweeping away humanity by carrying it to self-destruction. And yet today it is precisely this Sacrament of the Eucharist that is under attack from those who should be guarding the true faith. Thus, it is essential to understand the origin of this situation, which weakens the salvific presence of the Church and her power of intercession and protection.

The present crisis has a cause that—like “The Purloined Letter” of Edgar Allan Poe —is searched for in every possible place, while the whole time it is sitting right in front of everyone’s eyes, in plain view. But no one has thought— or has wanted — to look right where it ought to be and where it actually is: it is a crisis of the loss of faith, of modernism and apostasy that has spread even to the leadership of the Church. All of this is joined to the new geopolitical situation that came into being after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, which we could define as a neocapitalist globalization that is ideologically anti-Catholic.

The congruence between these two phenomena was manifested around 2013, with the disruptive power of a lightning bolt striking the “rock” on which the Catholic edifice is founded: the Vicar of Christ. This has never happened before. Fabrizio Grasso writes:

The papacy, in fact, up until the moment of the resignation of Benedict XVI, was the one political (as well as spiritual) institution in the world that had never wavered from the moment of its foundation. Not even the French Revolution, the breach of the Porta Pia [and the fall of the Papal States], or the Second Vatican Council (which caused a laceration within the Church that is still open) had been able to throw the political monument of the West into crisis.3

In order to understand what has happened and what is happening, it is necessary, therefore, to look back at what happened then. That is what you will find in these pages. But first we must make a brief detour to the first centuries of Christianity.

THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES OF PERSECUTION THAT marked the beginning of the Church’s pilgrimage, when almost every single one of the successors of Peter was martyred, came to an end with Constantine’s Edict of Milan in A.D. 313. But the Church was not at all safe thanks to this decree. Rather, it was precisely at this moment that she had to face a new and unforeseen danger, which was much more insidious than imperial persecution. She now faced imperial pollution, otherwise known as the Arian heresy. This internal heterodox trend spread throughout the Church with the support of the Emperor, undermining the true faith and true doctrine, and thus undermining the root of the Church herself.

The rise of the Arian heresy happened in ways that tended to repeat themselves in Church history. Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, a scholar on this topic, wrote:

We see [in the Arians] the same accommodation of the Christian Creed to the humour of an earthly Sovereign, the same fertility of disputation in support of their version of it, the same reckless profanation of things sacred, the same patient dissemination of error for the services of the age after them.4

Newman, who also ascribed to the Arians a “cruel and hard-hearted temper, which discovers itself in their persecution of the Catholics,”5 has demonstrated that the Arian crisis was the most serious crisis in the history of the Church, much more so than the persecutions that from the beginning had marked the path of the Church with blood.

Christian theological- political thought has always held that the greatest threat to the Church is to be found not in persecutions as such, but in the world’s persecuting hatred that works by demolishing the Faith from within the Church, through apostasy from the truth. It is not by chance that the Church teaches — basing itself on Sacred Scripture — that the Anti-christ will manifest himself precisely as a “religious deception” that will be the greatest historical incarnation of this constant threat to faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this well in number 675:

Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.

For this reason, the Church has always sought — as much as is possible in the hostile darkness of the world — to prevent worldly powers from undermining the purity of the Faith and Catholic doctrine or from stripping her of her divinely-given mission. She has always known that she would suffer persecution and that she had nothing to fear from it other than the martyrdom of her body. But she has always sought to protect herself from worldly powers and from heresies that attack her soul.

It is true that throughout her history she continually sought to construct a dramatic and unstable balance with the worldly powers. One need only think of the battle between the papacy and the empire over investitures during the 11th and 12th centuries, or the Avignon papacy in the 14th century, or the end of the Papal States in the second half of the 19th century. The greater and lesser political powers that, from time to time, gave the Church protection sought, in every way, to influence or at least condition the greatest spiritual authority in the world: the papacy. But even if such geopolitical powers often damaged the Church by their strategies, they were still “Catholic States” or non-hostile states that acted out of political interest with the goal of increasing or reinforcing their international influence. They did not seek to change or distort the nature of the Church in herself, that is, her mission or her doctrine.

There was only one other case in the past in which the political power— by means of supporting heresy — attacked the heart of the Faith itself and thus produced the greatest spiritual tragedy in Christian history: the Protestant schism. This was indeed a heresy within the Church that came to be supported and amplified by the German princes for the sake of their strong anti-Roman economic and political interests. And it was thanks to this political and economic association that Protestantism was able to give rise to such enormous results.6 And yet, although Protestantism was a grievous amputation that tore many people away from the true vine, it was not a poison that succeeded in demolishing the Church in her essence. Luther did not succeed in undermining the faith of the Church or the institution of the papacy.

Even Napoleon, who literally imprisoned the pope and who attempted to impose the secular ideology of the French Revolution, did not overturn (or was not able to overturn) the nature of the Church, although he persecuted her and attempted to enslave her.

In various adverse conditions, the Church always sought to juggle the different political powers, finding some sort of political agreement or some sort of political compromise that enabled her to protect her mission of evangelization and sanctification, without sacrificing her doctrine, her mission, or her identity.

This was also the case after she lost her temporal power and Papal States in 1871, and during the period up to the Second World War.

From 1945 to 1990, the West essentially guaranteed the liberty of the Holy See because during the Cold War the United States considered the Church to be a foundational rampart against the barbarians, that is, the communism of Eastern Europe. The Democratic Christian parties of the West—beginning with the Democrazia Cristiana [DC] party in Italy — represented the concrete means of this alliance between the Holy See and the United States. It was an alliance, however, in which the Holy See was free, and that also permitted the DC not to be a “slave of the Americans”—as is shown by (for example) the farsighted political vision of Aldo Moro who, not by coincidence, was closely tied to Paul VI. (In this context one should also recall the name of Enrico Mattei who at his best embodies the relative independence of Italian foreign policy.)

With the collapse of communism in 1989, the Vatican (as well as the Catholic Church), just like Italy, lost its geopolitical importance and thus lost its American “protection.” This brought Italy to the end of the First Republic and the dissolution of the old political parties (including the DC).

And the Vatican? For the Vatican it took more time. In the 1990’s it was able to continue its mission, without being swept up by the new world order, because the charisma of John Paul II, the moral and non-violent conqueror of communism, was so great in people’s eyes that his presence guaranteed full liberty to the Church. Thus, the Polish pope was able to stand in opposition—with force and authority—to the first Iraq War of George Bush in 1990.7 This was a huge sign of the freedom and independence of the Holy See and of its fidelity to its mission. But already with these events one began to notice the appearance of cracks and the signs of strong irritation from its trans-Atlantic ally. A planetary revolution was beginning that wanted to run over the Church and also risked disrupting nature.

Under the George W. Bush presidency there was an effort to enlist the Church against Saddam Hussein using a “neocon” perspective of a supposed war against Islam, but in reality, paradoxically, it was a war fought against the most secular part of Islam — a war that once again had devastating effects for Eastern Christians. It was an opaque war with the strong smell of oil, just like the previous one. But the Church (which also was very clear about the problem represented by Islam) refused to be transformed into the chaplaincy of the White House, as one of many American Evangelical Protestant denominations. The weakness of Bush and the moral force of the pontificate of John Paul II did not come together to accomplish that project.

After that, the game got tough. With the presidency of Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton—in continuity with the presidency of Bill Clinton of the 1990’s — a secularist ideology was imposed on a planetary level, masquerading as political correctness, with the support of the planetary hegemony of the USA and of financial globalization. Thus, the pontificate of Benedict XVI became an obstacle. The idea gathered strength of transforming the Church into the image of one of the (dying) Protestant denominations of Northern Europe, all in support of a German-dominated European Union—along with the Maastricht treaty and the Euro — as a pillar of market globalization, all in alignment with the new Obamian ideology.

THIS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT MUST BE WELL understood. With the death of John Paul II in 2005 and the pontificate of Benedict XVI, but above all after the election of Barack Obama to the White House in 2008 and the arrival of Hillary Clinton at the State Department, for the first time in centuries the Catholic Church found itself totally undefended, unable to count on a strategic alliance with any political power.

In fact, there is no longer any important nation that has a “Catholic” identity or is in any way close to the Holy See, and the European Union dominated by France and Germany is aligned with the Obama agenda (which is also the strongly ideologized agenda of the large supranational organisms like the United Nations).

On the part of Benedict XVI there was not any preconceived coldness toward the United States. Rather, in a discourse given in 2008, he spoke words that were very laudatory of the rapport between Church and State in that great nation, considering it an example of “sane” secularism [laicità]:

From the dawn of the Republic, America has been . . . a nation which values the role of religious belief in ensuring a vibrant and ethically sound democratic order. . . . The American people’s historic appreciation of the role of religion in shaping public discourse and in shedding light on the inherent moral dimension of social issues—a role at times contested in the name of a straitened understanding of political life and public discourse — is reflected in the efforts of so many of your fellow citizens and government leaders to ensure legal protection for God’s gift of life from conception to natural death, and the safeguarding of the institution of marriage, acknowledged as a stable union between a man and a woman, and that of the family.8

But all of this happened prior to the election of Barack Obama. Roberto Regoli, who dedicated an important study to the pontificate of Benedict XVI, notes:

With the presidency of Barack Obama the music changes . . . , there are clashes . . . over homosexual marriage, over abortion, over stem cell research. The [US] Bishops’ Conference does not see eye to eye with the Administration in Washington on health care reform or the so-called “liberal” agenda.9

The point is this: that liberal agenda became in fact an urgent ideological agenda for the whole world.

Benedict XVI, who had already experienced heavy resistance from modernism within the Church, suddenly found himself to be a huge sign of contradiction with respect to the cultural mainstream, the media, and the designs of worldly powers who were aiming at a true and proper “normalization” of the Catholic Church by means of what they called an “opening to modernity,” that is, a Protestantization that would sweep away the Church’s fundamental distinguishing marks.

In a certain way, Benedict XVI (above all in the last five extremely difficult years of his pontificate) embodied the prophetic figure of the Church that Pier Paolo Pasolini foresaw in the 1970’s, calling its enemy by the generic name of “consumerism” — not being able to foresee the details of the collapse of communism, globalization, and worldwide financial power. But he knew how to glimpse the face of a new totalitarianism behind the libertarian masks of the new sexual customs willed by power. He wrote: “Of all the many and serious faults of the Church, . . . the most serious would be that of passively accepting its own liquidation by a power that laughs at the Gospel.” He continued:

She [the Church] ought to move to the opposition. . . . She ought to move to the opposition of a power that has cynically abandoned her, planning to reduce her, without a fuss, to pure folklore . . . . She ought to resume a fight that is already a part of her tradition (the battle between the papacy and the empire), but not in order to conquer that power. The Church could be the guide, grandiose but not authoritarian, of all those who resist . . . the new consumerist power that is completely irreligious, totalitarian, violent; pretending to be tolerant, but actually more repressive than ever, corrupting and degrading. . . . Either do this or accept a power that does not want it to exist anymore: that would be to commit suicide.10

This was a prophetic intuition that was fulfilled thirty years later and echoed in the dramatic words with which Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger opened the conclave of 2005, denouncing a true and real “dictatorship of relativism” that was establishing itself (still prior to the Obama presidency):

Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be “tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine,” seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.11

Cardinal Ratzinger emerged from that conclave as the one elected pope. And in the Mass for the inauguration of the pontificate he spoke words so dramatic that they were totally unprecedented. Benedict XVI was perhaps the only one who had an awareness of the true nature of the situation right from the beginning of his pontificate and who sought to make the Christian people sense it right in the middle of his Mass of enthronement, that is, during a most solemn and public event. His words, truly unusual for that ceremony and for a man like Ratzinger, unbelievably went almost unnoticed, but this too cannot be a coincidence. He said in his homily: “Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.”12

Nobody asked what the reason was for that surprising expression, or who the wolves were to whom he alluded. Nobody asked why a man like Joseph Ratzinger, who is always prudent and calm, would have decided to throw that “bomb” into such a solemn moment, in which he had the eyes of the Church and the entire world fixed on him. Nobody asked themselves what titanic clash it was that Benedict XVI clearly knew he would have to face. It was not only a clash with the world — which had suddenly become adverse to the Church—but also a clash within the Church itself.

It is striking how hostility towards Benedict XVI united the most diverse realities. This was evident on September 12, 2006, when he gave the historic — and formidable — Regensburg Address, which was completely misunderstood by the media. That address was not a declaration of war but, on the contrary, was a hand extended both to the Islamic world and to the secular West, based on the common ground of dialogue represented by reason. It brought about a channeling of attacks and hostility against the pope from Muslims, the secular West, and the progressive Catholic universe. René Girard wrote: “What I see in this discourse is, first of all, a speech in praise of reason. Everyone hurled themselves against the pope, [but] this pope, who is considered a reactionary, presented himself as the defender of reason.”

It should not be forgotten, however, that in 2007 Benedict XVI was even forced to decline the invitation of the Rector of Sapienza University of Rome to give a lecture for the inauguration of the academic year, because of the raging reactions that this invitation stirred up in the intellectual and university world. It was an emblematic episode of the climate in which Benedict XVI had to guide the Church.

2
Who Wanted a Revolution in the Church
(And Why)

Feeding the flock means loving, and loving also means being ready to suffer.

—Benedict XVI, Homily of April 24, 2005

IT WAS STILL 2007 (THUS SHORTLY PRIOR TO THE Obama/Clinton era) when Benedict XVI, in his encyclical Spe Salvi, considered the tragic effects of de-Christianization for humanity. Ratzinger did so in an unusual way, typical of the great intellectual that he is, by using a quotation from Immanuel Kant, in order to make a universal appeal to reason. I would like to return to that passage:

In 1794, in the text Das Ende aller Dinge (“The End of All Things”), a changed image appears. Now Kant considers the possibility that, as well as the natural end of all things, there may be another that is against nature, a perverse end. He writes in this connection: “If Christianity should one day cease to be worthy of love . . . then the prevailing mode in human thought would be rejection and opposition to it; and the Anti-christ . . . would begin his—albeit short—regime (presumably based on fear and self-interest); but then, because Christianity, though destined to be the world religion, would not in fact be favoured by destiny to become so, then, in a moral respect, this could lead to the (perverted) end of all things.”13

The pope thus indicated a series of elements to keep in mind: apostasy in the Church, hatred of the Faith by the world, the Antichrist, and “the (perverted) end of all things.” A theological-political picture that evidently ought to be applied to the present time, because — in effect — our time is the first epoch in all of history in which men (or better, the powers of the world) truly have the possibility of enacting “the (perverted) end of all things,” and also to do it in just a few moments. A power that may be defined as “Antichristic.”

Faced with such an apocalyptic scenario, Benedict XVI indicated the only possible deterrent: the anchor of the true faith in Christ and his Church. After all, the political judgment of the Church on the various powers of the world does not use worldly values as its criteria, but rather Christ himself and the truth about man that he has revealed.

Since 2007, the year of Spe Salvi, two events have taken place that ought to be read from the perspective indicated by Benedict XVI.

First: the financial crisis of 2007–2008, which demonstrated the chasm into which market globalization was leading the world. Second: the (mistaken) response of the American establishment, which has not at all corrected or contained the excessive power of finance and the “dictatorship of relativism” and instead—led by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton —has continued to pursue an ideological utopia of a unipolar world, inventing the existence of an external enemy by demonizing Russia under Vladimir Putin.14 This demonization, fed by neo-cons as well as liberals, reached absurd levels; from it only a few dissented, such as Henry Kissinger, who has always refrained from being dragged into ideological wars and who is a true example of political realism. Another is Professor Stephen F. Cohen of Princeton University, one of the greatest scholars of Russia, who made an objective evaluation of the Russian leader, demolishing all of the unfounded stereotypes put into circulation by the media against Putin in these years: “Washington has made many policies strongly influenced by the demonizing of Putin — a personal vilification far exceeding any ever applied to Soviet Russia’s latter-day Communist leaders.”15

Certainly, Russia is not the best possible nation on earth (nor for that matter is the United States), and certainly the Russians could change some things about their nation, but they have emerged from seventy years of totalitarian communism and from ten years of devastation under Boris Yeltsin and they are building a nation that is much more prosperous and democratic than any they have ever had. They are in need of a friendly West that would be willing to help them in this process, and they have looked for such help many times in the last few years, but instead they have found the West to be a fierce enemy. American policy towards Putin has been aggressively hostile. This is demonstrated among other things by the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe begun by Bill Clinton and that has taken place in spite of the agreement made with Mikhail Gorbachev.16 Writes Diana Johnstone:

The Americans seemed incapable of comprehending why a nation that twice in modern times was the victim of a massive and devastating invasion from the West would be worried about the United States extending the reach of the greatest military apparatus in history right to [Russia’s] doorstep.

In fact, she continues, “instead of receiving the numerous overtures made by Russia in favor of peaceful cooperation, the Clinton administration preferred to treat Russia like a defeated enemy.”17

Then, under the Obama/Clinton administration, the United States came to an alarming level of military tension with Russia, with dangerous provocations made by sorcerer’s apprentices and without any logical motive,18 other than the sole fact that, under Putin, Russia was free from the wild, devastating chaos of the 1990’s and had her own autonomous policy that did not fold before the imperial claims of the United States or before the ideological colonization of liberal Americans, also known as the dictatorship of relativism.19

From this point of view, it is very significant — and widely discussed—that in his last book-length interview Benedict XVI gave an evaluation of these two symbolic men: Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin. Here is his elegant criticism of Obama: “A great politician, of course, who knows what it takes to be successful, and has certain ideas that we cannot share . . .”20 And here is his significant evaluation of the Russian leader:

We spoke with each other in German; he speaks perfect German. We didn’t go very deep, but I certainly believe that he is — a man of power of course — somehow also affected by the necessity of faith. He is a realist. He sees that Russia suffers from the destruction of morality. Even as a patriot, as someone who wants Russia to have the role of a Great Power again, he sees that the destruction of Christianity threatens to destroy her. Man needs God, he sees that quite evidently, and he is certainly affected by it inwardly as well. He has now even, as he gave the Papa [Pope Francis] an icon, made the sign of the cross and kissed it.21

There are those who maintain that this opening of Benedict XVI to Russia — which in itself was a great contribution to world peace — was considered by the new American order indigestible, a serious act of insubordination that could not be forgiven. A strategic analyst, Germano Dottori, writing in the geopolitical review Limes, has advanced this thesis:

The tensions between the Church and the United States did not diminish even after the death of John Paul II. They actually increased during the pontificate of Papa Ratzinger, not only because of the investment made by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the political Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood during the so-called Arab Spring, but also because of the determination of Benedict XVI to reach an historic reconciliation with the Patriarch of Moscow, which would have been for him the true religious crowning of a geopolitical project of integrating Europe and Russia, supported with conviction by Germany and also by the Italy of Silvio Berlusconi (but not by the Italy of Giorgio Napolitano, which is more in line with America). The way it all ended is known by everyone. Both the Italian government and the papacy were simultaneously embroiled in a coordinated campaign of scandals, unusually violent and without precedent, which also involved more or less shady financial maneuvers, with the final result of bringing about the departure of Berlusconi from the Palazzo Chigi in November 2011, and the abdication of Ratzinger on February 11, 2013.22

Dottori also gave an interview to the Zenit Catholic news agency, in which he was specifically asked this question: “The emails released by WikiLeaks during the electoral campaign revealed hidden aspects of Hillary Clinton and her staff. 23 One letter from 2012 reveals a certain attention being given to the Catholic Church. What does it say?” Here is Dottori’s response:

Documents have come out [from 2011–2012] that reveal a strong determination by the staff of Hillary Clinton to stir up an internal revolt within the Church in order to weaken the hierarchy. They would employ associations and pressure groups created from below, following a plan that was consolidated in the experience of other “colored revolutions.” We have not yet found the “smoking gun,” but we are getting close to it. Although I have no proof, I have always thought that Benedict XVI was led to his abdication by a complex machinery, run by those who had an interest in stopping the reconciliation with Orthodox Russia, the religious pillar of a project of progressive convergence between continental Europe and Moscow. For similar reasons, I believe that the path to succession [to the papacy] of Cardinal Scola was also blocked, who as patriarch of Venice had led the negotiations with Moscow.24

Dottori’s considerations merit research and further study to see if forms of pressure and influence were ever enacted (and if so, what kind).

But the idea that a “colored revolution” was initiated within the Church, analogous to the one effected by supporting the Islamists in the so-called “Arab Spring” (with devastating results), is very interesting and does not appear to be unfounded. And thus it is evident that the so-called “resignation” of Benedict XVI must be understood within this geopolitical context.

This does not mean that the resignation was extorted, for we know from Benedict XVI himself that his decision was a free one. This does not mean that many people were not pressing for it and cheered for it, but it does exclude the possibility that the pope yielded to coercion. On this point Benedict XVI has spoken clearly: “No one has tried to blackmail me. If that had been attempted I would not have gone, since you are not permitted to leave because you’re under pressure.”25

Certainly, his action remains a mystery. There remain many enigmas surrounding his most unusual and dramatic choice, raising many profound questions.

Dottori has the merit of placing at the center of our attention something that is, in my opinion, one of the keystones for understanding many events of recent years: the declared war (both cold and hot) of the United States of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton against the Russia of Vladimir Putin. This strategy risked the possibility —if Clinton had gained the White House—of flaring into a real and direct armed conflict between the two powers, with apocalyptic results . . . a possibility that still has not at all been averted.

The project of creating a unipolar world under American dominance, which thus ought to subdue a Russia that has become independent and autonomous, is the final ideological folly birthed by the twentieth century, the century of totalitarianisms. It is a suicidal imperialistic project for the United States and extremely dangerous for the world, but it deeply pervades the American establishment (among both neocons and liberals). Even Donald Trump, who won election by running against this ideology and those who embrace it, must now come to terms with it. Today he finds himself heavily conditioned by this power block, which seems to be stronger than the elected president because it has the Deep State in its pocket.26

But, in conclusion to all of this, it must be specified that the interest of Benedict XVI in Eastern Christianity is first and foremost a concern for the defense of the Faith, for the common centrality of the liturgical act of adoration offered to God (that is, the centrality of the Eucharist), and therefore, through this way, for the desired historic reunification between the Orthodox Church and Latin Church. Such a high and great vision also has profound cultural and political repercussions.

Here is an eloquent example of the dialogue of Benedict XVI with Orthodox Russia that, according to Dottori, alarmed the American establishment. The Orthodox Patriarch translated the opera omnia of Benedict XVI, and the Orthodox bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, metropolitan of Volokolamsk and chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow, wrote the preface for a volume of Ratzinger’s works dedicated to the liturgy, which was published in 2015 when he was already pope emeritus. In those pages Hilarion recalls that “Pope Benedict has often expressed his profound sympathy for Orthodoxy and he has always believed that, at the theological level, the Orthodox are the closest to Catholics.” This is a significant observation since the mainstream instead was driving and continues to drive in the direction of Protestantism.

After recalling that Ratzinger was one of the first members of the mixed international commission founded in 1979 for theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, Hilarion adds:

As a theologian, Ratzinger has made enormous efforts to clarify the question of the primacy of the bishop of Rome, shifting the emphasis from a juridical vision of the primacy to understanding [the pope] primarily as a Christian witness of a particular type and as a service to unity in love. He was always firmly opposed to any compromise in the doctrine of the Faith, justly pointing out that unity — which is in principle possible between the East and West — requires careful preparation and must mature both spiritually and at the practical level, assisted by deep theological and historical studies.

But the central passage of Hilarion is this: “The name of Benedict XVI is linked to the battle for the defense of traditional Christian values and, at the same time, the battle for the rediscovery and reaffirmation of their relevance in modern secularized society.” The Patriarchate of Moscow decided, therefore, to publish the work of Benedict XVI not only as “a sign of great esteem for the author,” but also because Ratzinger has always “been opposed to the tendency towards the superficial ‘creativity’ that today sometimes enters Christianity in the West, as well as to the tendency towards emptying the liturgy of its authentic content and of its purpose of being an encounter and vital link between God and his creation.” Even if these problems primarily concern the Catholic world, says the metropolitan,

it is important that the Russian reader, who has heard much talk about the modernistic tendencies in contemporary Catholicism, may know the critical perspective of one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the modern age on the theme of the sad rupture with the Tradition that took place in the period following the Second Vatican Council and the difficulties with which the path of “aggiornamento” is fraught.27

Can it get any clearer than this? It is obvious that here we are at the opposite pole from the “rehabilitation” of Martin Luther attempted by Papa Bergoglio and also from his “revolutionary” ideas on the Eucharist and the Liturgy.

The preface of the pope emeritus to the volume published by the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow is also very explicit. Here we read, among other things:

The most profound cause of the crisis which has disrupted the Church lies in the obscuring of the priority of God in the liturgy. All this led me to dedicate myself to the theme of the Liturgy more fully than in the past, because I knew that the true renewal of the Liturgy is a fundamental condition for the renewal of the Church . . . . In its substance, despite all of the differences, the essence of the Liturgy in the East and the West is one and the same. And thus I hope that this book may help the Christians of Russia to understand in a new and better way the great gift which has been given to us in the Sacred Liturgy.28

DOTTORI MENTIONED THE “COLORED REVOLUTIONS” supported by the Obama/Clinton administration. This story, which exploded around the year 2011, is emblematic of the way in which Washington’s strategy of world dominance is prepared to exploit even religions without scruple in order to achieve its strategic objectives.

The world had a warning of this in the 1990s during the Yugoslavian civil war, with the way in which religions (Orthodoxy, Islam, and Catholicism) and ethnicities were used to make that nation explode. Diana Johnstone writes:

During the Clinton Presidency between 1993 and 2000, Yugoslavia was used by the foreign policy establishment as an experimental laboratory for testing techniques of control, subversion, and “regime change” effected by the United States, which were then employed elsewhere. The use of Yugoslavia as a mini-USSR, with Serbia in the place of Russia, and the fracturing of Yugoslavia and thus of Serbia itself (through the detachment of Kosovo) constituted the general proof of the process that we have recently seen at work in Ukraine, with Russia as the objective.29

Then there was the plan called “The Greater Middle East Project” that was developed for the Muslim world by the Bush administration in 2003, after the tragedy of September 11, with several heavy military interventions. It was presented with the declared objective of removing oxygen from terrorism and Islamic extremism. In reality, its principal supporter was Saudi Arabia, and this helps us to understand how much it really wanted to fight against Muslim fundamentalism. The plan aimed above all at controlling oil production and at “the creation of a gigantic area of free trade” functioning in U. S. interests in the vast arc from Morocco to Afghanistan.

“The crisis that has struck the world economy and the dollar system since 2008 has only intensified the rush to strategic resources,” writes Alfredo Macchi. “Barack Obama, after entering the White House in January 2009, corrected and refined the project from a methodological point of view, but the strategic objective has remained unchanged.”30 This objective included the complete removal of Russia from the Mediterranean and its isolation.

As a result of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the United States could no longer throw enormous financial resources into military interventions, and so it changed its strategy into one of sponsoring and supporting the Islamist movement against the old Arab regimes.

Macchi observes:

The Arab Spring, planned or not, was the occasion for Washington to get rid of regimes linked in some way to the old statist and nationalist conceptions of the economy, inherited from Soviet socialism with an Arab flavor. . . . Sacrificing old friends like Ben Ali, Mubarak, Saleh as well as traditional enemies like Qaddafi and Assad in the name of the free market was an obligatory choice for Washington.31

In fact, 2010–2011 saw the beginning of the so- called “Arab Spring”: upheavals in the public square that had the Islamist fringe as their dominant protagonists and that destabilized above all the Arab nations that were still secular. In 2011 a total of four heads of state were forced to surrender to the public square (in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen). In the case of Libya, the West — that is, the European nations and the USA—directly intervened militarily to overthrow Qaddafi.

Then there is the case of Syria, in which the civil war lasted for years and, once again, the West supported the mostly Islamist uprising against the secular President Assad (Obama’s announcement remains memorable: “Assad must go”).32

Naturally, no revolt was ignited in totalitarian and fundamentalist Saudi Arabia, breeding ground of Sunni fundamentalism, because it is the pillar of American control of the region of oil production.

And whenever a group of naïve youth appeared who actually believed in the media myth of the “Arab Spring” and went out into the public square in nations that were not in Washington’s viewfinder, it quickly ended badly. This was the case in Bahrain, which offers “shelter to the Fifth Fleet of the United States.” Protests broke out there on February 14, 2011, but immediately the monarch asked for help from Saudi Arabia, and the revolt was suppressed in blood. “Washington, always ready to condemn repression when it was done by the regimes of Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Qaddafi, did not say a word,” observes Macchi.33

In that year of “revolutions” born in a laboratory, the situation in Italy also exploded, as Dottori recalls. November 2011 saw the fall of a government that was elected by Italians with a stable majority in Parliament, but which was not “loved” by the EU (also because it was not supportive of the German and French banks during the Greek financial crisis), a government that had excellent relations with Qaddafi’s Libya (where the presence of the energy company Eni was strong), a government whose premier was “too friendly” with Putin. It was replaced with a government that was not voted for by electors, a technical executive government led by Professor Mario Monti and welcomed by the European Union (meaning Germany and France) and by the United States. A government that, obviously, will make the choices desired by the markets and by the EU.

During these same months of 2011, the crisis in Ukraine intensified, in which the USA fought strenuously to stabilize a pro-American government in Kiev that would be strongly averse to Putin’s Russia. Also in this case, the Americans showed that they were ready to use religion unscrupulously as an instrument of their plan for imperial dominance. Here, however, it involved Orthodox Christianity, the shared faith of both Ukraine and Russia. It is an operation that continues, as evidenced by the most recent episode of this “cold war,” namely the attempt to create a schism separating Orthodox Ukraine from the Patriarchate of Moscow, which has been warmly supported by the United States and endorsed by the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

On September 14, 2018, the (pro-American) Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko received Samuel Brownback, American Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, and informed him of the measures that had been taken to create an autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Then he thanked the United Stated for its support, which Ambassador Brownback confirmed, giving assurances that in the future the US will support the right of Ukraine to have its own autocephalous Orthodox Church.34

On September 17, Metropolitan Hilarion, who, as already mentioned, is the head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow, accused the United States of attacking the Russian Orthodox Church. Hilarion declared that “America is interested in the weakening of the Russian Orthodox Church,” recalling that Zbigniew Brzezinski, an important American political personality and counselor of several US Presidents, “used to say, following the fall of the Soviet Union,” that “the principal power of the former Soviet Union that the United States ought to destroy is the Russian Orthodox Church.” Well, “that is what is now happening,” Hilarion declared. He added that “it is totally obvious” that the American administration was behind the action of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (recalling the meeting of the American ambassadors with Ukrainian President Poroshenko and with Patriarch Bartholomew).35

Moreover, Hilarion pointed out that the only religious leader who is capable of uniting all Ukrainians is Metropolitan Onufriy, who is in communion with the Russian Orthodox Church, and thus the projected schism is above all a separation from the true Ukrainian Church.

As a confirmation of this view of things, on the same day, September 17, 2018, former American Vice President Joseph Biden (VP to Obama) met with the schismatic “patriarch” Filaret of Kiev (in what capacity we do not know) expressing his support for the creation of an autocephalous Church in Ukraine. It is also significant that Filaret had been in the United States since September 14, where he was received at the State Department and was supposed to meet with two exarchs of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. During the meeting, Biden emphasized the importance of a united autocephalous Ukrainian Church united in support of Ukrainian sovereignty (whenever it deals with Eastern Europe, as happened in the past with Yugoslavia, the West is a fervent supporter of sovereignties and also of heated nationalisms) . Then Obama’s former Vice President expressed his gratitude to Filaret for his work of “the spread of spirituality in Ukrainian society, his service to the Ukrainian army, his fight against corruption, etc.”

For his part, Filaret awarded Biden with a decoration, the Order of Saint Vladimir, for his “continuous support of the Ukraine,” a decoration that was also given to Senator John McCain in 2015 for his support of Ukraine during “the Russian occupation of Donbass and Crimea.” The website Orthodoxie.com reported that “Biden is also known for his friendly rapport with Patriarch Bartholomew, whom he visited twice in Constantinople. In 2015 he [the Patriarch] conferred on him the Award for Human Rights of Athens.” And yet, “in a recent interview, Filaret declared that the United States does not interfere in ecclesiastical affairs in Ukraine or in any other country.”36 The reliability of this affirmation may be serenely evaluated in the light of the facts thus far exposed. It is significant that even in this affair, which concluded with the historic fracture between the Patriarchates of Moscow and Constantinople, the United States’ interventionism made a very large use of banners and slogans about human rights.

American interventionism is a constant thing, and here we must clear up a possible misunderstanding. There is no doubt that all of Europe, and especially Italy, owes a great deal to the United States for literally restoring our democracy and freedom in 1945. We equally owe a great deal to the United States for having protected Western Europe and Italy from the communist threat during the Cold War. There is no need to be naïve: we understand that its victory in the Second World War became the basis for the United States constructing its dominance over the West and affirming its interests all over the world, yet one must still recognize the American merit of having defended freedom and democracy in Europe by fighting totalitarian monsters. However, it must also be said — above all, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and of communism in Europe — that in the new American imperial perspective, the banner of human rights and freedom has often been abused, in an instrumental and intermittent way, to impose American interests and the strategies and agenda of the United States government.37

This unscrupulous American “interventionism” in religions also emerged in the years 2011 and 2012 in events relative to the Catholic Church.

There was a certain amount of clamor in the United States in October 2016 when documents and emails published by WikiLeaks38 revealed the effort made by the Democratic entourage of Hillary Clinton to create a sort of “revolution” in the Catholic Church at the time when it was still guided by Benedict XVI. Its objective was to shift the Church away from its “non- negotiable principles” and from doctrinal orthodoxy towards “progressive” themes, even up to a doctrinal opening to new sexual customs, contraception, and abortion. The Catholic Herald of October 12, 2016 ran the headline “Clinton Campaign Chief Helped Start Catholic Organizations to Create ‘Revolution’ in the Church.”39

The key figure in this affair is an important personality of the Democratic Party, John Podesta, who in 2016 was appointed presidential electoral campaign chief for Hillary Clinton, and who was previously White House Chief of Staff in 1998–2001 for President Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husband, and was also co-chairman of the Obama-Biden Transition Project at the beginning of the Obama administration.

We need to remember that in the United States Catholics are the largest religious denomination (80 million people) and the Catholic episcopate in those years was in large part faithful to the Magisterium of Benedict XVI. For this reason, the orientation of the electorate (and of the episcopate) was a very important political question.

Thus, in February 2012, Podesta received an email from Sandy Newman, friend of Barack Obama and president of the organization Voices of Progress, which is concerned with climate change, immigration, and similar issues. Newman asked Podesta how to “plant the seeds of the revolution” in the Catholic Church. This did not concern only topics like contraception: “There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic church.”40 Obviously there was a need to defeat whoever in the Church would be opposed to such a revolution. Podesta responded to the email explaining that they were working in this direction: “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up.”41 In other emails exchanged between leadership of Democratic think tanks and important personalities of Hillary Clinton’s electoral campaign, Catholics are ridiculed in various ways.42

The revelation of these emails stirred up a reaction from, among others, Paul Ryan, Republican Speaker of the House, who said: “To despise the Catholic Church, accusing her of being ‘seriously retrograde,’ is an insult to millions of people in this entire country. In any case, this declaration reveals the hostile approach of the Clinton campaign towards people of faith in general.”43

Also in 2016, Andrea Mainardi noted that, among others, “an important donor financing this cause is the philanthropist George Soros,” fervent supporter of liberal and global themes opposed to Catholicism. Mainardi made a list of the funding provided by Soros’s foundation to progressive Catholic organ izations and then wrote:

Soros himself, we know from another group of WikiLeaks documents published last summer,44 donated $650,000 for the 2015 visit of Pope Francis to the United States. Among the beneficiaries, there is also PICO (People Improving Communities Through Organizing), which is supported by Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, one of the men closest to the pope. Its purpose: to influence and favor the creation of a bishops’ front that will dissociate itself from the “cultural warrior” identity of the American episcopate and be more in tune with Bergoglio on the themes of economic justice and equality. Or better yet—as one document shows—to influence the pope himself, involving him by means of Cardinal Maradiaga. The implied effect: to marginalize the more conservative members of the hierarchy, such as the still very influential Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia.45

Riccardo Cascioli, in the La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana journal, also emphasized the importance of these revelations:

The financier George Soros has made consistent contributions to Catholic organizations in order to “change the priorities of the American Catholic Church” from the themes of life and family to those of social justice. . . . The great occasion for this to happen was given in the [September 2015] visit of the pope to the United States, and Soros’s foundation aimed explicitly at using the good rapport between PICO and Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, one of the chief counselors of Pope Francis, to “engage” the pope on themes of social justice.

How is this huge investment justified? Cascioli explains:

The first and most important [reason] is the great investment that traditionally anti-Catholic philanthropic organizations are making to undermine the teaching of the Church. And this is the true goal of the “change of priorities” they call for, away from the themes of family and life to those of social justice. In this Soros is part of the stream of a decades-long tradition that includes as protagonists the principal American foundations, from Rockefeller to Ford, from Kellogg to Turner and so forth. It is a project of “Protestantization.”. . . The motive? The Catholic Church, which in its relationship with international organizations has as its fundamental goal the defense of human dignity, is the last bastion that stands in the way of a new world order that wants to reduce man to a simple instrument in the hands of power.46

Thus, on January 22, 2017, the Catholic online review The Remnant published an open letter from a group of American Catholic personalities to the newly inaugurated President Donald Trump.47 In their letter they ask Trump to investigate a matter that “remains cloaked in secrecy,” namely: “We have reason to believe that a Vatican ‘regime change’ was engineered by the Obama administration.” The signatories cite the emails of which we have already spoken, where mention is made of a “revolution” in the Church, and then continue:

Approximately a year after this e-mail discussion, which was never intended to be made public, we find that Pope Benedict XVI abdicated under highly unusual circumstances and was replaced by a pope whose apparent mission is to provide a spiritual component to the radical ideological agenda of the international left.

In reality, there is no documented connection between the comments and plans discussed in those emails of important American personalities and the subsequent “resignation” of Benedict XVI, which — we repeat — was completely free and voluntary. The signatories, as we have seen, came to the conclusion: “We have reason to believe that a Vatican ‘regime change’ was engineered by the Obama administration.” However, to tell the truth, although the documents published thus far lead one to think that there was a strong interest in this direction, it does not appear that they contain any proof of a planned “regime change.”

It is possible to ask questions, however, and the signatories of the letter do just that. They ask, among other things: “To what end was the National Security Agency monitoring the conclave that elected Pope Francis? What other covert operations were carried out by US government operatives concerning the resignation of Pope Benedict or the conclave that elected Pope Francis?” Then they ask whether “US government operatives” had contact with the St. Gallen group that Cardinal Danneels spoke about, and finally they ask about the strange affair of the suspension of “international monetary transactions with the Vatican” during the days immediately preceding the resignation of Pope Benedict (which resumed immediately after his resignation).

Finally, here are the last few of their list of questions for Trump:

What initiatives, if any, have actually been taken by John Podesta, Hillary Clinton, and others connected to the Obama administration involved in the debate aimed at fomenting a “Catholic Spring”? What was the purpose and nature of the secret meeting between the Vice President Joseph Biden and Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican on or around June 3, 2011? What roles were played by George Soros48 and other international financiers who may be currently residing in United States territory?

The signatories conclude by asking Trump to order an investigation to find out if “the U.S. government interfered inappropriately into the affairs of the Catholic Church.”

THE SITUATION INSIDE THE CHURCH WAS ALREADY extremely turbulent. The pontificate of Benedict XVI was already strongly opposed during the conclave of 2005, and after his election the battle against him became ever fiercer. Weakened by a strong crisis of Faith, threatened by Modernist currents (including among members of the hierarchy) calling for a surrender to modernity,49 meaning worldly ideology, the Church found herself without defense, eroded from within and exposed to a great geopolitical attack. The target of all of these attacks was the papacy.

The pontificate of Benedict XVI suffered constant bombardment from the media, united to extremely heavy internal opposition. It suffices to recall the episode of the Regensburg Address as well as all of the international media focus on sexual scandals in the Church, which generally left unmentioned the large amount of work undertaken by Benedict XVI to purge the Church.50

In order to understand the extremely hostile climate Benedict XVI had to endure from the moment of his election within the Roman Curia as well as in the entire Church, I return to my book Non è Francesco [He is Not Francis], and in particular to the chapter “Dancing with the Wolves.”51 Other sources on this topic are Nicolas Diat’s study, L’homme qui ne voulait pas être pape, as well as the work of Andrea Tornielli and Paolo Rodari, Attacco a Ratzinger, which the two journalists, who today hold viewpoints on the Church much different from then, wrote in 2010.52

During the years of his pontificate, Benedict XVI was subjected to systematic and continuous attacks, and he found himself in a position of obvious isolation that grew ever more intense, until it reached the point that he did not have any real power within the Curia. Finally, the Vatileaks affair revealed that the situation even within his personal residence was truly unheard-of and astonishing.

What especially made a stir was the dissent of bishops and cardinals that was constantly amplified by the media. A prime example was the case of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, who became ever more prominent because his statements were read and presented as being directly opposed to the pontificate of Benedict XVI. It suffices to recall his “Spiritual Testament” published in Corriere della Sera in August 2012, shortly after his death. There was quite an uproar over Martini’s declaration in that interview that he judged the Church as an institution to be “two hundred years behind the times.” In accord with the judgment of today’s dominant culture that claims the right to “assimilate” the Church, 53 Martini was in tune with the secular idea of progress and with positions embraced by the world, even down to specific themes, such as calling for a greater “opening” in sexual morality (exactly the line that would be taken by the future Bergoglian pontificate).

But the Martini case was only the tip of the iceberg, because he represented a significant part of the ecclesiastical world. For years — that is, since the end of the pontificate of John Paul II — a true and proper war was being fought within the Church, which saw on one side bishops and cardinals faithful to the teaching of the Church standing with Karol Wojtyła and Joseph Ratzinger, and on the other “the innovators” standing with Cardinal Martini, who held that the Church ought to accept a process of assimilation to modernity similar to that of the Protestant denominations of Northern Europe.

This is precisely the description given by an exceptional analyst, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, secretary of Benedict XVI and Prefect of the Papal Household, in his memorable address on May 21, 2016, at the Gregorian University of Rome (which will be examined in the second part of this book). The occasion for Gänswein’s intervention was the presentation of Robert Regoli’s book Oltre la crisi della Chiesa. Il pontificato di Benedetto XVI [Beyond the Crisis of the Church: The Pontificate of Benedict XVI].

Summarizing Regoli’s “brilliant and illuminating” analysis of Ratzinger’s papacy, Archbishop Gänswein declared the book to be

profound and well documented . . . especially in its examination of the beginning of [the pontificate] in the Conclave of April 2005, from which Joseph Ratzinger . . . emerged elected . . . following a dramatic battle between the so-called “Salt of the Earth Party” led by Cardinals Lopez Trujillo, Ruini, Herranz, Rouco Varela, and Medina, and the so-called “St. Gallen Group” led by Cardinals Danneels, Martini, Silvestrini, and Murphy-O’Connor; a group that, recently, Cardinal Danneels of Brussels jokingly called “a sort of mafia-club.”

The election of Benedict XVI, Gänswein continued,

was certainly the end result of a confrontation, which was as it were summarized by Ratzinger’s historic homily given as Dean of the College of Cardinals on April 18, 2005, in St. Peter’s Basilica; it occurred precisely where “a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires” had been directly opposed by another measure: “the Son of God, the true man” as “the measure of true humanism.”

Explosive words, especially if we consider that the candidate put forward by the St. Gallen Group in opposition to Ratzinger in that conclave of 2005 was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the one who would succeed in getting himself elected in 2013 following the resignation of Benedict XVI. This group of cardinals, as Cardinal Danneels revealed in an interview, began to meet in St. Gallen, Switzerland, in 1996 at the initiative of the local bishop, Ivo Fürer, and Cardinal Martini. There were many bishops and cardinals who belonged to this group, all united by their aversion to the positions first of Cardinal Ratzinger and then of Benedict XVI and the current of thought within the Church that he represented. These meetings would end in 2006.

Vaticanist Edward Pentin has written: “Although the secretive club hadn’t formally met since 2006, it’s safe to say that it helped form a network that paved the way for at least favoring Cardinal Bergoglio at the conclave seven years later.”54

In a similar vein, Jonathan V. Last wrote at The Weekly Standard:

The pontificate of Francis can, perhaps, best be understood as a political project. His election at the conclave in 2013 was — unbeknownst to the world at the time — the result of a campaign planned out in advance by four radical cardinals who saw then-cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the perfect vehicle for the revolution they wanted to launch within the Church. (The story of how Cardinals Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Walter Kasper, Godfried Danneels, and Karl Lehmann formed “Team Bergoglio” is detailed in Austen Ivereigh’s substantial biography of Francis.)55

Recently an explosive piece of information emerged—even though it passed largely unobserved — concerning the eve of the 2013 conclave that elected Bergoglio. In 2017 Catherine Pepinster published a book, The Keys and the Kingdom, where she refers to an unpublished fact that is surprising and very significant. The protagonist is Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, a man who is very influential and highly accredited in the highest establishment of the British Crown.

O’Connor did not vote at the conclave because he was over 80 years old, but he was one of the principal “kingmakers” of Bergoglio as the head of the “reformer cardinals,” a “party” led by Walter Kasper, Godfried Danneels, and Karl Lehmann, “all considered supporters of Jorge Bergoglio in the Conclave of 2005” who “were able to count on many Latin American electors as well as many influential European ones.”

The author cites Austen Ivereigh, who writes in his biography of Pope Francis: “There were eleven African cardinals and ten from Asia. For those coming from historically English- speaking nations, British Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor was a point of reference.” Pepinster observes, “It is here that the United Kingdom gave a substantial contribution to the preparation of the 2013 conclave.”

What happened was that a meeting was called for all of the English-speaking cardinals from developing countries and from the British Commonwealth. Where? At the British Embassy to the Holy See, which was made available by the British ambassador, Nigel Baker. More specifically, it took place at Palazzo Pallavicini, the ambassador’s residence. Pepinster relates:

As Tim Fischer, the Australian ambassador to the Holy See and Deputy Prime Minister [of Australia] has affirmed: “That there could be British influence in the conclave was contrary to every prediction, and yet it happened, because one of the most powerful cardinals whom I have ever met, Cormac Murphy O’Connor, was the most influential non-voting cardinal that I have ever known in the world of the election of a pope.”56

It is altogether exceptional that such a direct role would be played by a nation that is historically anti-Catholic and is also the cradle of Freemasonry. Anyone who knows a bit about the formidable and “imperial” foreign policy of Britain can easily be led to see that there would have been a strong political interest on the part of that important nation to have Jorge Mario Bergoglio elected pope. Alternatively, we could surmise that British diplomacy is concerned with volunteering for acts of charity, and that in that circumstance it wanted to offer evangelical hospitality in its own house to certain cardinals who were in need of shelter. Those cardinals, however, could have easily met at any number of residences of religious orders in Rome or reserved a meeting room at a hotel. Instead they chose to meet there. Most extraordinary.

In such a case, there are those who will recall article 80 of the Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis, which is still in force, where it prohibits the cardinal-electors from accepting “all possible forms of interference, opposition, and suggestion whereby secular authorities of whatever order and degree, or any individual or group, might attempt to exercise influence on the election of the pope.”57

Probably this was not the case, since there is no report of any direct interference from the government in London, but certainly this episode sheds ample light on the political context in which the events of 2013 unfolded.

UNTIL NOW WE HAVE SPOKEN OF AN HISTORIC SHIFT that took place in the geopolitical strategy of the United States, which wanted to become the sole and absolute master of the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall. What was the nature of this revolution, which began in the 1990s and which may generically be called “globalization”?

“Globalization,” Diana Johnstone explains, “means the Americanization of the entire world. Our interests and values must predominate everywhere.” Interests and values. Thus there is an economic aspect — “a world that is unified by the universal penetration of financial markets” sweeping away the traditional powers of individual nations—and there is also an ideological aspect, which is the assimilation of all peoples into the new ideology of American liberals, that is, their secular “politically correct” agenda. In both these aspects, what occurs is a “glebalization”58 of the peoples, using the term of Diego Fusaro.

I emphasize the two characteristics mentioned: a new type of global capitalism that places the market above everything and everyone (it has been defined by the term “marketism”), and a secular American presidency of the world that, first under Bill Clinton and then under Barack Obama, has imposed its ideological agenda on the world by directly attacking not only Christian tradition but also the West itself in its anthropology: it is the Empire, which this time is secular and anti-Catholic, against the Church and against the identity and sovereignty of peoples.

The new type of capitalism that made inroads in the 1990s even presented itself as “the end of history” (a term coined by Francis Fukuyama), a pretentious Hegelian-flavored formulation that wanted to declare “the end” of history, as if the new global order, which was really the Americanization of the planet, contained the meaning and fulfillment of human history.

In 1998 the book Project for the New American Century was published, which in essence laid out the plan for a unipolar imperialism to be imposed on the planet. It was a project that drew in both neocons and liberals in varying shades (both John McCain and Hillary Clinton, to be clear), who then later found themselves united together in opposition to the barbarian Trump, guilty of contesting this globalization and this insane ideological utopia.

In order to understand something of the new financial capitalism and the ultraliberal globalization that was imposing itself, of which the European Union of Maastricht and the Euro are important mechanisms, we must reread the thought of Italian economist Paolo Savona who, as is well known, is an expert on the capitalist establishment. Speaking in July 2014 at the presentation of François Heisbourg’s book La fin du rêve européen [The End of the European Dream], he said:

I believe that there are indeed dominant economic powers that, after the fall of communism — which was their fear— returned to their old vices: they are antidemocratic, they place capitalistic accumulation at the top of the scale of social values, and . . . they succeed by exploiting the ignorance of the people about difficult and delicate matters; they terrorize them. We are presently going through the phase of terror.59

Here we find several elements of the new globalized order. From 1945 to 1990, at least in Europe, capitalism went hand in hand with democracy, but after 1990 it underwent a grave transformation. Markets — established as one global market with a firepower able to bring any individual nation to its knees — claimed the right to dictate the law. Thus they opposed the mechanism of democracy and popular sovereignty, because there the tribunal to which governments must answer is still the people, the voters. This tension produced a fracture between the new capitalism and democracy, between ultraliberalism and liberalism, which tend to become more and more incompatible.

For the market, it is necessary to have distance from, or at least to neutralize, the nation-state (the last true obstacle to the undisputed dominion of the markets) by eliminating the very concepts of nation and identity (all identities, as we shall see). The media system is more or less used to accomplish this, and, as Savona says, to “terrorize” public opinion, for example by raising up the specter of the spread of debt, like a noose hung around the neck of governments and nations. It terrorizes public opinion in order to make it accept continual sacrifices, tears, and blood beneath the blows of the pickaxe demolishing the social state (as well as the nation-state) and increasing the profits of the masters of illusion.

At a certain point, this new order became so consolidated that today when the media, which always diligently sings the praises of the new order, speaks of the economic politics of governments, it no longer refers to citizens or to voters but to the markets, which are venerated uncritically as a meta-physical category, whose response is looked for just as at one time one referred to divine judgment (“What will the markets say?,” “The markets are showing signs of nervousness,” “We are waiting for the reaction of the markets,” etc.) — as if it was normal that judgment on the action of a government was up to the ratings agencies and markets instead of citizens, and as if this turning of the tables was normal by which today it is the people themselves (as voters and as a nation) who are examined and judged by the markets and not vice-versa. This is exactly what Italian politician Giulio Tremonti calls “marketism”: the absolute dominion of the market over political and social life.

It is this sort of logic that demanded and led to the acceptance of the idea of “delocalization”: the transferring of industrial activities from countries with strong social safeguards (Europe and the USA) to countries where the cost of labor is much less. It is for exactly this same reason that the “marketists” support the idea of mass immigration into the West. In both these cases the goal is to have labor available at the lowest cost in order to increase profits. This can be accomplished either by moving industrial activity into underdeveloped nations or by moving manpower from these countries into the West.

It is a mechanism known since the days of Karl Marx, who spoke of a “reserve industrial army.” As early as 1894, French socialist Jean Jaures wrote:

What we do not want is for international capital to go and look for labor in the markets where it is more debased, humiliated, and depreciated, in order to throw it without control or rules into the French market, thus bringing wages everywhere in the world to the level of the countries where it is lowest. It is in this sense, in this sense only, that we want to protect French labor against foreign labor, not — I repeat — for the sake of a chauvinist exclusivism, but in order to replace international misery with international well-being.60

The fact that the Establishment and the media, which obeys the marketists, are in favor of mass immigration is not surprising. What is novel today is that everyone on the Left, whether socialists, social democrats, or democrats, have all become paladins of this devastating mass migration, which is presented as a cosmopolitan utopia of an “open society.” (Pope Bergoglio also presents this dramatic uprooting of peoples as a healthy “encounter,” while not acknowledging the colossal trauma it involves both for the nations left behind and for those that are the destination.) But all of these people of the Left have agreed to do the work of the demolition of the “social state” and of the “nation-state.”

In the United States as well as in Italy and the rest of Europe, the Left has imposed the iron laws of the market against the old guarantees of welfare, and—while presenting itself as the “progressive Left” —it has shelved “social rights” while hiding under the banner of its fight for so-called civil rights (from gay unions to euthanasia) or behind multiculturalism and its presumed pro-immigration solidarity. In addition, mass immigration also has the “merit” (for globalists) of disrupting national identities and annihilating them, or producing conflicts of this sort.61

Everything began after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In the 1990s, when the administration of Bill Clinton dismantled the New Deal, multiculturalism emerged as the social ideal . . . . The political integration of Europe was transformed into a showcase for economic globalization. But . . . it was presented as the definitive renunciation of nationalism and war.62

In his 1997 book Achieving Our Country, based on a series of lectures given at Stanford University between 1996 and 1997, a famous American philosopher with a left-wing perspective, Richard Rorty, foresaw that marketist globalization would impoverish large numbers of workers, and that nations thus depleted would be “distracted” by huge battles over sexual customs and by ethnic-religious clashes. “Globalization,” wrote Rorty, “is producing a world economy in which every attempt by a nation to avoid the impoverishment of its workers has the result of taking away their work.” He then predicted the advent of “a dominant cosmopolitan class” that would govern the world economy with a posture “against workers of whatever nation” similar to that of the “great American capitalists of the nineteenth century.” And “this worrisome economic cosmopolitanism has, as a by-product, an attractive cultural cosmopolitanism,” which, however, “is limited to 25% of Americans. The new economic cosmopolitanism is preparing a future in which the remaining 75% will see their standard of living diminished.” This will lead to the formation of “hereditary castes” and “the end result will be an Orwellian world . . . . The analogy to the Orwellian Outer Party will be a class of educated, wealthy, professional cosmopolitans.” And here are the “weapons of mass distraction” used by the cosmopolitan elite who hold power. Rorty writes:

Since economic policies are their prerogative, they will encourage politicians, both on the Right and on the Left, to devote themselves to the great cultural battles. The goal will be to distract the attention of the masses, to keep the 75% of Americans having less and the 95% of the world population having less occupied in ethnic and religious hostilities and in discussions over sexual habits. If the masses can be distracted from their afflictions by pseudo-events created by the media, including from time to time some brief and bloody wars, the super-rich will have little to fear.

It will be no surprise, predicted Rorty, if “the intelligentsia of the Left” will be culturally

deployed alongside managers and shareholders — sharing their same class interests — since we intellectuals, who are more or less all members of academia, are relatively protected, at least for a brief time, from the effects of globalization. What makes things worse is the fact that we often seem more concerned with the destinies of workers from underdeveloped countries than with the destinies of our fellow citizens.

Ultimately, it will lead to the liquidation of the nation-state:

The cultural Left often seems convinced that the nation-state is something obsolete, and that therefore it makes no sense to try and resurrect national policies. The problem is that the national state is, and will be for the foreseeable future, the only entity capable of making a difference.

As a voice speaking from a left-wing background, Rorty’s viewpoint is even more significant. Critical “populist” thinking believes that financial deregulation, which needs to transcend borders, frontiers, and religious and national identities, must also be an anthropological deregulation that similarly needs to overcome the “borders” of individual identity and gender identity. Every person becomes anonymous and stateless, just like money and finance. What is striking, however, is the distance between the common man and this elite, which claims to represent enlightened progressivism, imposes its ideological dogmas, and is then followed by the salons and academies of the imperial periphery. A lucid anti-conformist like Camille Paglia has noted the paradox well:

The left has become a bourgeois fraud, completely separated from the people it claims to represent. All of the main exponents of the American Left today are rich journalists or academics who occupy elitist salons where ideological conformism is forged. These petty and arrogant dictators do not have the least respect for viewpoints opposed to their own. Their sentimentalism has led them to believe that they must control and limit freedom of speech within democracy in order to protect paternalistically the permanent class of victims of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. The American Left is an artificial world produced by fantasy, a ghetto where liberals speak only with other liberals.63

The universal lordship of the market and of what is “politically correct” — which has coined a new pagan religion, complete with its divinities (the markets), its commandments, and its indisputable dogmas — naturally also claims to dictate its agenda to the traditional religions, destined as they are to lose their vitality and become empty shells and fossils. This is the Obama/UN agenda that, as soon as he was elected, Pope Bergoglio immediately made his own: catastrophic environmentalism (with pollution and global warming replacing the notions of sin and original sin), ideological immigrationism (replacing the new commandment), the embrace of Islam and pro-Protestant ecumenism, the obscuring of doctrine and the attack on the sacraments, the abandonment of non-negotiable principles, and a “merciful” opening to new sexual practices and new forms of “marital” union.

As one of the best Catholic journalists in the business, Irishman John Waters, has said: “The media consider Pope Francis useful to their agenda . . . . So far Pope Francis has shown his willingness to become an instrument of the enemies of the Church.”64

PART TWO
That Which Is Not Understood:
Benedict Is Pope Forever

But there are eschatological truths — truths that are providentially inspired by the Holy Spirit in the course of history in order to save the Church. We may think of Carl Schmitt and his “state of exception.” The Church is called by the Holy Spirit, who is Her guide, to states of exception. The history of the Church is full of states of exception.

— Gianni Baget Bozzo, L’Anticrist

3
The (Non) Resignation of the Papacy

I remain particularly struck by a passage of his [Saint Ignatius of Antioch’s] Letter to the Ephesians: “It is better to remain in silence and to be, than to speak and not be.”

— Benedict XVI,

Preface to The Power of Silence65

The weakness of God is more powerful than men.

Corinthians 1:25

CERTAIN ENEMIES OF THE CHURCH REJOICED over Benedict XVI’s announcement of resignation on February 11, 2013. They applauded and sang victory. One commenter even sarcastically said that leaving was his best act of governance as pope. They believed that they were seeing their enemy thrown to the ground, their historic adversary surrendering in defeat, and they were inebriated with their triumph. Benedict, meek and humble as always, appeared to have declared himself defeated, saying he was no longer able to continue because of his lack of strength, and in declaring his resignation—after having thanked everybody—he concluded with: “I ask forgiveness for all of my defects.”

Thus, his adversaries believed that they had achieved a total victory and did not pay attention to the details, to the subtleties and profundity of the words spoken, or to what Benedict XVI, in simplicity of heart, was actually doing and saying. Today, in fact, re -reading everything calmly and in the light of the years that have passed since 2013, we ought to ask ourselves: Did Benedict XVI truly resign from the papacy on February 11, 2013, returning to what he was before, as did Celestine V? Or could his action be considered as a retreat tactic in order to have greater strength?

If it was a retreat tactic, perhaps it was not he who strategized it: perhaps he simply “followed” a path pointed out to him by the Master, by Him who “humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, death on a cross” (Phil 2:8) and by means of this “defeat” obtained the total victory over evil and death.

But, humanly speaking, if we analyze the facts with an earthly measure, we are dealing, in this case, with a tactic that recalls that of the Russians at the time of Napoleon’s invasion. At that time, the French Emperor believed that he had won an amazing victory, immensely consequential, without having had to fight. He found himself standing in front of all the grandeur of the Czar’s empire: the Russian army, which had retreated and even handed over the city of Moscow (in flames), seemed to be a broken army, ruined and fleeing. Napoleon believed he was the uncontested master of Russia. But shortly afterwards he would discover the costly and bitter truth: in certain cases the reality is much different than the appearance, and a “retreat” can be a formidable move that leads the conquering army to collapse so that the homeland can be retaken.

Thus, in the case of Benedict XVI we must ask, did he truly resign from all of the Petrine ministry? Is he no longer pope? The answer to this question, today, looking at the last six years, is clearly, “No.”

Was his step backwards a return to what he was before, or was it only “a step to the side” so as to wait for other events? The answer to this question — as we shall see — was given by his “spokesman” Archbishop Georg Gänswein: this was not a step backward, but “a step to the side in order to make room for his successor and for a new stage in the history of the papacy.”

From a subjective point of view, we can thus affirm that his intention—which is decisive for defining the action he carried out—was not that of no longer being the pope. After all, anyone who has reflected on the gestures, actions, and words of Benedict XVI knows that there is not one single action or declaration by him in which he has ever stated that he has nothing more to do with the papacy. Even in ordinary news reports, it is now an accepted fact that Benedict did not completely resign the papacy. To cite only one—by way of example —here is how the Rome correspondent for the New York Times describes it: “But Benedict, the first pope to resign in almost 600 years, refused to fully renounce the papacy, taking the title ‘pope emeritus’ and continuing to live in the Vatican.”66

Fabrizio Grasso, a scholar who has analyzed the situation from a philosophical point of view in his study La rinuncia, writes: “From a purely logical point of view it is difficult to maintain that the pope resigned totally and completely from his ministry, and we are legitimized in forming this idea precisely because of his own declarations.”67 It is evident that, although he made a relative resignation of the papacy (but of what sort?), he has intended to remain as pope, although in an enigmatic way and in an unprecedented form, which has not been explained — at least not yet.

This is clearly true from the last official public discourse of his pontificate, the general audience of February 27, 2013, when he addressed the people of God regarding his ministry: “The ‘always’ is also a ‘forever’ — there can no longer be a return to the private sphere. My decision to resign the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this.”68 This is a shocking statement, because if by this action Benedict XVI resigned only “the active exercise of the ministry,” this means that he did not intend to resign the ministry in itself. The fact that he has declared that his Petrine ministry is not revoked is quite amazing: it is an expression that should have made everyone jump off their seats, most of all the cardinals!

Whether this separation of the active ministry and the contemplative ministry is correct or in error, the words of Benedict XVI are resounding words, and they should have stirred up great interest, because they shed light on the intention of his act, which was thus not an act of renouncing the Petrine ministry per se. In the light of his last address, it may be understood why Joseph Ratzinger has remained in the “enclosure of Peter,” still signs his name Benedict XVI, still calls himself “pope emeritus,” still uses the papal heraldic insignia and continues to dress as pope.

There have also been symbolic episodes that feed the impression that we are dealing with two popes. For example, Saverio Gaeta, attentive observer of Vatican affairs, recalled and reported what happened on May 6, 2016, at the swearing-in ceremony of the new Swiss Guards, who have the duty of “constantly keeping watch over the security of the person of the Holy Father and of his residence.” He noticed that there were two drums with the emblem of Pope Francis and one with the emblem of Benedict XVI. Gaeta reflected:

Above all we notice the fact that on the emblem of Pope Bergoglio the pallium is absent, whereas it is present on the emblem of Pope Ratzinger— an element that is decisively not negligible in Vatican symbology. . . . And what’s more, we consider that Francis normally does not wear the traditional “Fisherman’s Ring” made of gold-plated silver and designed by the sculptor Enrico Manfrini that depicts Saint Peter with the keys of the kingdom. Instead he wears the silver ring, inscribed with a cross, which he has worn since he was consecrated bishop in 1992. Whereas Benedict XVI, after the annulment of the pontifical ring with the image of Saint Peter the fisher of men, now wears on his finger a copy of the ring that Paul VI gave in 1965 to the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, depicting Christ surmounted by a cross and flanked by Saint Peter and Saint Paul.69

We may also add to this the fact — photographically documented — that in public ceremonies in which the pope emeritus has participated, there have been cardinals who have approached him, bowing and kissing his ring, which they could do only with the pope.

Grasso, as an impartial analyst, notes:

Today two things appear evident, at least observing from a point of view that is preeminently political and not faith-based: the first is that from the moment of Francis’s election, there are de facto two popes; the second is that, in a more or less ambiguous way, each recognizes in the other a reciprocal legitimacy. Here it is interesting to note the historical-political fact that this is an entirely exceptional and unprecedented situation in the Catholic Church.70

After all, Jorge Bergoglio himself calls Benedict “Your Holiness,” and this title is also given to Benedict in official Vatican rituals. And if “the pope himself [Francis] was forced to declare to journalists in 2014, ‘There is only one pope,’” observes Grasso, “this is a manifest sign that the seed of doubt has already borne fruit among the faithful . . . . Also because, by pure logic, if there was only one pope in reality, there would be no need to emphasize it and restate it so many times.”71

Thus, the resignation of Benedict XVI is at least something to be considered doubtful. And at this point there are those who will ask—pay attention here—whether according to canon law (as we shall see) a doubtful resignation is in fact an invalid resignation, with the colossal consequences that we sense this would entail.

The doubtful resignation, moreover, is publicly attested to by the definition of his actual status: pope emeritus. In contrast to every other previous case of papal resignation (in which the man who was pope returned to his previous status as monk or bishop, without any further reference to the papal ministry), Benedict XVI—as we have said—decided to be, since February 28, 2013, “pope emeritus.”

An authoritative canonist, Fr. Gianfranco Ghirlanda, commented in Civiltà Cattolica (which is published with the approval of the Vatican) in the days immediately following February 11, 2013: “It is evident that the pope who resigns and is no longer pope, no longer has any power in the Church and is not able to involve himself in any matter of governance. Here we may ask what title Benedict XVI will retain. We think that he ought to be given the title of ‘bishop emeritus of Rome,’ like every other diocesan bishop who retires.”72 In other words, if Benedict XVI had resigned from the papacy in such a way as to no longer be pope, he would have been able to call himself “bishop emeritus of Rome,” as Fr. Ghirlanda suggested.

But Benedict XVI did not adhere to this “reading” of his choice, and it was the Director of the Vatican Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, who announced on February 26, 2013, that Benedict XVI would remain as “pope emeritus” or “Roman pontiff emeritus,” also keeping the title of “His Holiness.” He would no longer wear the Fisherman’s Ring and he would wear the simple white cassock. Evidently—since the words in this case and in that location are very important and have a precise meaning—this meant that there was not any “discharge of the pope” (as Fr. Ghirlanda wrote) and it could not be said that Benedict XVI was no longer pope. And since symbols also have a very precise meaning at the Holy See, it should be noted that this reading was confirmed when Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo went to Benedict XVI to change his heraldic arms in view of his new condition. On that occasion it was suggested that there would be a return to the heraldry of a cardinal or that a new set of arms be created for the position of pope emeritus. But these proposals were politely rejected. In fact, the Vatican expressly made it known that Benedict XVI was keeping the arms of the pope, with the keys of Peter: “He prefers not to adopt a different heraldic emblem expressive of the new situation created by his renunciation of the Petrine ministry.”73

It is noteworthy that, apart from the magisterium of words, there is also a magisterium of actions, and the above actions seem to be very eloquent decisions. Benedict XVI clearly remained as pope, being so only without the exercise of the ministry. It is the first time this has ever happened in the history of the Church.

What does the expression “pope emeritus” really mean? And why did Benedict XVI make this choice?

In one of the first interviews released by Benedict XVI’s secretary, Georg Gänswein, after the resignation, when asked by a journalist from Avvenire if Ratzinger ever regretted having taken the title of pope emeritus, Don Georg responded no, and he explained the reason: “He believes that this title corresponds to the reality”74 — a response that was also surprising, and which ought to have led to many questions and reflections. But instead the comment was passed by in silence. Apparently nobody wanted to dig any further to clarify this enigma.

Nobody wanted to understand, not even in the Vatican — indeed, above all in the Vatican, where there was probably fear of discovering that a colossal problem had opened up at the very summit of the authority of the Church. What did the words of Archbishop Gänswein, secretary of Benedict XVI, really mean? To what “reality” did the title of “pope emeritus” correspond if not — in some way — to a pontifical “reality”?

If Joseph Ratzinger still dresses as pope, if he defines himself as “pope emeritus” and still calls himself “His Holiness Benedict XVI,” then evidently he is the pope: this is what Gänswein implicitly said. The pope emeritus is logically still the pope, just as a bishop emeritus is still a bishop. But in what sense, since it is not possible to equate the status of pope with that of bishops? Why have there never been “popes emeriti” until now? And is it actually possible to have two coexistent popes? Why has the meaning of “pope emeritus” never been clarified from juridical and theological points of view (even though the figure of bishop emeritus has been so defined)?

We are dealing with a totally unprecedented situation.

Before diving into these questions, it must be said that there are those who did catch the same content in the strange official formula of renunciation used by Benedict XVI on February 11, 2013, as in his discourse on the following February 27, that is, a renunciation solely of the “active exercise of the ministry” and not of the ministry as such. This would mean that this formal act of resignation would similarly give shape to a sort of partial renunciation. But what does this mean from a canonical and theological point of view? And is it possible that a partial renunciation of the papacy can be made, or is this in fact a doubtful resignation, which would therefore be null? After all, this text has also given rise to other questions.

HERE ARE THE WORDS SPOKEN BY BENEDICT XVI ON February 11, 2013:

After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary—strength which, in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of bishop of Rome, successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is. . . . With regard to myself, I wish also to serve devotedly the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.75

There are two important aspects of this text. The pope makes clear that he is not fleeing before the wolves, but remains and wants to continue “to serve devotedly the Holy Church of God.” In addition, there is the proclamation of the vacant see and the reference to the next conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff — a sign that the act of Benedict XVI intended to produce the consequences that in fact it did.

But there are other aspects that create questions. Above all — in a preliminary way — there seems to be a certain unexplainable hastiness in this action, this renunciation, in the middle of the “Year of Faith” that he himself had proclaimed and for which he had prepared a very important encyclical that was almost finished.76 Why, before leaving, would he not bring that announced document to completion by publishing it, which would have taken only a little bit of time? How can such hurriedness be explained, even more mysterious when we consider that the pope had previously made commitments for the days and months that followed? There was no circumstance looming (that we know of), nor was there any illness that rendered this action urgently necessary. What therefore had happened that was so decisive and extreme that it precipitated these events?

On the other hand, it was also a contradictory haste, because the resignation of February 11 did not occur immediately as it should have, but only after a period of seventeen days, beginning at 8:00 P.M. on the following February 28, for no apparent reason, that is, without there being any technical or pastoral reason (either evident or declared) for the resignation’s postponed validity of 17 days.

THE ACT OF FIXING THE DATE FROM WHICH THE resignation would take effect raises huge juridical doubts about the validity of that act. Can we find something in the vast canonical literature that can shed light for us on this aspect of the question?

We may consult — among other sources — the ponderous work of the Portuguese Jesuit Francisco Leytam (1631–1716), dedicated to Cosimo III de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, which was published in 1695 with all of the necessary ecclesiastical placets, entitled Impenetrabilis Pontificiae Dignitatis Clypeus.77 In it we find condensed all of the canonical doctrine of the Church referring to exceptional periods and situations in the life of the Church. The author, Father Francisco Leytam, taught at Évora, Portugal, before being called to Rome where, for the rest of his life, as a learned jurist, he worked in the Curia as a censor of books. Father Leytam addresses all of the most burning questions relative to the rapport between popes and councils, conclaves, cases of doubtful elections of popes, papal resignations, and the case of schismatic or even heretic popes, as well as addressing case studies related to antipopes. In Chapter VII he also undertakes a learned defense of papal infallibility.

The lawyer Francesco Patruno, a jurist who has published many works concerning law, a doctor of research in the canonical and ecclesiastical sciences, who assisted in the reading of Leytam’s work, explained to me that it is also important and significant to note what is not present, since it is a work intended to clarify every possible case that had presented itself in the history of the Church.

When Leytam speaks of the “renunciation” of the pope, he envisions several possible situations. Among other possibilities, he addresses the situation where a condition is placed upon the act of resignation (section XI, §96), and the effects of the revoking of the resignation before or after the realization of the event inferred in the condition. Obviously, the legitimacy of the successor depends on whether or not the inferred event occurred. But, Patruno observes, what is completely absent from Leytam’s work is the case of the placing of a time limit (either at the beginning or at the end) to the resignation, which is precisely what happened with Benedict XVI when he read his Declaratio in the presence of the cardinals on February 11, 2013, affirming that “from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is to do so.” Patruno explains to us that we are faced with a huge problem:

The canonical literature does not address the hypothesis of a time limit — that is, since it had never happened before, it does not discuss what happens if a pope places a final time on his pontificate in the act of resignation (as happened in the case of Benedict XVI) and then, after the expiration of this time, the election of a new pope proceeds. This hypothesis is not considered by Leytam. In my opinion, the discipline of the law in such a case would be similar to that of matrimony. And on that point it is significant that Leytam, discussing the vacancy of the Apostolic See, speaks of a widowed Church (section VIII), leaving the impression that it is as if a pope is married to the Church! The present codification of canon law, in contrast to the preceding code (as also in the code of Italian civil law, article 108) permits the fixing of a condition vel de praesenti vel de praeterito [either of the present or the past] within certain limits, but not a condition de futuro [of the future], and it definitely considers null a marriage subject to a time limit (either at the beginning or the end).

Returning to the question of the resignation of Benedict XVI, what does all this mean? Patruno explains:

The resignation, as well as the acceptance of the Supreme Pontificate, is a purely juridical act. In technical jargon, it is an actus legitimi, which does not tolerate the addition of accidental elements (accidentalia negotii) such as a time limit. This is confirmed in the present canonical codification.

In fact, the 1983 Code of Canon Law (can. 332, §1), speaking of the acceptance of the Supreme Pontificate, says that “from the moment in which” the designated man accepts his canonically valid election as pope, he receives authority over the entire Church. The Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis, number 88, reads: “After his acceptance, the person elected, if he has already received episcopal ordination, is immediately bishop of the Church of Rome, true pope and head of the college of bishops. He thus acquires and can exercise full and supreme power over the universal Church.” And the Code of Canon Law of the Eastern Churches confirms the same concept.78 Patruno again:

This means that the acceptance does not admit of any terms or conditions and that, with the act of acceptance, the chosen man immediately becomes pope. The same thing occurs with the resignation. Just as the acceptance does not permit any terms or conditions, by analogy, the resignation, which is a contrarius actus, an equal and opposite act to the acceptance, does not permit terms or conditions of any sort.

What do the canonical norms recalled by Patruno imply? They imply the fact that the Petrine ministry is not a mere administrative or bureaucratic office,79 but is rather a munus that God confers if there is a “yes” on the part of the chosen man. There is always a collaboration between God and man. God leaves the man free to say “yes,” and if he accepts, he is invested with the authority of Supreme Pastor and with the grace of state, which remains as long as there is the will of the subject.80

If this will fails, God immediately retracts the authority and charism, just as he immediately gave it — but it must be the man’s full and intimate will to retract his “yes” completely, and in the case of Benedict XVI, this did not happen, or at least it is absolutely doubtful that it happened. Moreover, it is not possible to place conditions on God so that He waits to withdraw this authority and grace precisely at the moment of 8:00 P. M . of a date in the near future, just as it would also not be possible to do this for the “yes” of matrimony.

What would be the consequences if it was believed that this time limit did not have juridical validity? Patruno responds:

The reason that actus legitimi such as acceptances or resignations do not permit of conditions or terms rests in the fact that we are dealing with acts that are accomplished by the speaking of certa verba, as the Roman jurists say, which as a result are logically incompatible with a postponement — which a condition or time limit involves — of the effects of the same act that is accomplished with those certa verba. Thus, the classification of the act of acceptance or resignation in this juridical category involves the radical nullity of the act (vitiatur et vitiat).

But couldn’t the resignation instead be held to be valid from the date of February 11 when it was spoken?

If the resignation would be considered valid from February 11, 2013 and if the time limit (of February 28, 2013 at 8:00 P. M . ) were not affixed to it, it would be necessary to recognize all of the acts carried out by Benedict XVI during that period of time (from February 11–28, 2013) as juridically null, inasmuch as they were performed by someone who was no longer the pope. Thus, for example, we would have to consider as null the motu proprio Normas Nonnullas of February 22, 2013, with which [Benedict XVI] modified the rules for the election of popes.

That motu proprio also authorized the opening of the conclave at an earlier date,81 which was in fact moved up by several days.82 Does this in turn invalidate that conclave, which was held using the modified rules?

I do not exclude it. However, personally I hold to the option that sees the resignation itself as invalid, in its root and totality, according to the noted principle of the law that takes up a quaestio of the Roman jurist Emilio Papiniano: “Actus legitimi, qui non recipiunt diem vel condicionem . . . in totium vitiantur per temporis vel condicionis adiectionem.” [Legitimate acts that do not admit of any time limit or condition . . . are completely invalidated by the addition of any condition.]

What is the juridical reason (which is joined to the theological reason of which we have spoken concerning the acceptance or resignation of the papacy)?

The ratio of the inadmissibility of accidental elements in similar dealings or juridical acts is found in the fact of the social importance of the effects of these acts, which requires that there be no uncertainty about their existence, their efficacy (which is immediate), and the length of their juridical effects. Hence the logical incompatibility of these acts with any postponement of the effects of the act accomplished with certa verba.

And thus it is evident that there is an open juridical problem.

IN ADDITION, ONE IS STRUCK BY THE REASON GIVEN in the Declaratio for the resignation: the decline of strength as a result of “advanced age.”

An authoritative canonist, Cardinal Vincenzo Fagiolo, the former president of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, was assigned in 1994 by John Paul II “to undertake a study on the juridical and ecclesiological implications of the renuntiatio papae.”83 He concluded his work by declaring that “in an exhaustive and absolute way, the pope may not ever resign solely for reasons of age.”84

In the case of Benedict XVI, it was precisely this motive of advanced age that was the reason given for the resignation. After all, there was no serious illness present, nor was there any mental decline. It is now six years after the resignation, and Benedict is perfectly lucid and in possession of his faculties. How is it possible, then, that he could have truly resigned the ministry of Vicar of Christ in the absence of the serious reasons required by the Church?

The canonical literature is unanimous. Luigi Chiappetta writes that “the Roman Pontiff freely accepts his office, and he can freely renounce it, presuming for liceity (through a moral, non-juridical impetus) a just and proportionate reason.”85 A serious reason is generally considered to be a loss of mental faculties; otherwise, while it would be a valid resignation, it would be a morally deplorable act. The canonist Carlo Fantappiè also confirms that the renunciation of the papacy can happen only “in truly exceptional cases and for the superior good of the Church.” This is “the condition for renouncing the office [of pope] without falling into a grave fault before God.”86

Since Benedict XVI did not indicate that there were exceptional reasons for his resignation,87 and since we cannot imagine that he wanted “to fall into a grave fault,” there are two possibilities (excluding coercion): either his resignation was not a true and full renunciation of the papacy, or else his exceptional reasons were not explained. There is also the possibility — as we shall see — that these two possibilities are both simultaneously true.

If he had no exceptional reason, the ministry of the Vicar of Christ would have been de facto desacralized by Benedict’s resignation and reduced to a normal human office that can be abandoned as a result of age. But certainly one cannot believe that Benedict XVI would agree with his historic adversary Hans Küng, who declared triumphantly: “Now it is clear that the resignation opens the way to the demystification of the papal ministry, the repercussions of which are not yet calculable.”88

No, the choice of Benedict XVI is (as we shall see) completely opposed to such a conception: thus there are other explanations for his actions and words.

Returning to the Declaratio, another aspect to observe is the brevity of the formula used: “I declare that I renounce the minis-try of bishop of Rome, successor of Saint Peter.” We may contrast this with the formula Paul VI used when he wrote a letter of resignation that was to take force in the event of a grave illness:

We declare—in the case of an infirmity believed to be incurable or of long duration that impedes us from sufficiently exercising the functions of our apostolic ministry; or in the case of another serious and prolonged impediment that is likewise an obstacle—that we renounce our holy and canonical office, both as bishop of Rome and head of the same Holy Catholic Church.89

In the case of Benedict XVI, there is no reference to a gravely invalidating illness, and there is simply (only) the statement of renouncing “the ministry of bishop of Rome”; in the case of Paul VI, the renunciation — due to a possible future grave illness —was made expressly “both as bishop of Rome and head of the same Holy Catholic Church.”

Perhaps this is an insignificant particular detail. But it could also be significant, as one is led to think by the attentive reading and analysis of the Declaratio done by the canonist Stefano Violi, who reaches some surprising and disturbing conclusions that we will now consider.

IN THE FIRST MONTHS OF 2013, IMMEDIATELY AFTER the resignation of Benedict XVI, Stefano Violi, professor at the Faculty of Theology of Lugano and at the Theological Faculty of Emilia Romagna, published a study in the Rivista Teologica di Lugano entitled “The Resignation of Benedict XVI: Between History, Law, and Conscience.”90

Before examining the fundamental statements, it ought to be emphasized that in his Declaratio, the pope — curiously—made no mention of the section of the Code of Canon Law that regulates the resignation of the papacy, as would have been an obvious thing to do. Why? Perhaps because the resignation of the papacy was not what he intended to do? We don’t know.

What Violi discovers, however— using rational analysis—is truly very significant and makes us sense the answer: “The formula with which Benedict XVI declared his decision, departing from the dictate of the Code, introduces an innovative juridical precedent in the history of the Church, a final solemn act of his magisterium.” Moreover, in his final audience of February 27, 2013, Benedict himself emphasized that there is a “novelty” in his action: “I have taken this step with full awareness of its gravity and even its novelty.”91

But what is this novelty? Here is Violi’s explanation:

Turning to the formula utilized to express the resignation, there are two facts that emerge from the declaration: first, it is missing any reference to Canon 332 §2; second, the vocabulary chosen is very different from the norm of Quoniam Alicui of Boniface VIII that speaks of the renunciation of the Papacy (renuntiare papatui), as it also differs from the codicial dictate that regulates the renuntiatio muneri. The Declaratio instead actually affirms the renuntiatio ministerii.

Violi maintains that the novelty of the formula used by Benedict “may be grasped in its full scope by reconstructing the argumentative articulation of the text.” And here we discover that, far from being a formal declaration with a significance that may be taken for granted, the text of Benedict XVI is complex, contains nothing that may be taken for granted (not even the presumed renunciation of the papacy), and is thick with theological and canonical statements that open surprising perspectives. It was no accident that Archbishop Gänswein said that the text was the fruit of a long theological meditation by the pope. Thus, Violi must be given credit for understanding the import and deciphering the important contents of these few lines, whereas in the analysis of the ecclesiastical, journalistic, and intellectual world a certain superficiality predominated, even in this case. Almost nobody wanted to understand or asked questions, not even in the face of the obvious exceptionality of the events in progress, nor after the publication of studies such as Violi’s.

We will now examine how the passages of Benedict XVI line up with the deciphering of Violi.

The canonist focuses on the decisive phrase of the Declaratio of Benedict XVI: “my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.” The key word is “exercise.” Violi comments on this: “The awareness of his conscience regards his inability to correctly administer the Petrine office (munus). By means of this formulation . . . the office (munus) is distinguished from its administration. His [lack of] strength renders him unfit for the administration of the munus, not for the munus itself.”

The formulation chosen by the pope —Violi explains—puts emphasis on “the eminently spiritual essence of the Petrine munus.” It would be an error to read the resignation “through the lens of modern efficiency” or of a company in which the executive no longer has the strength to exercise his role and so resigns, returning to private life. No. The pope has at heart above all “the spiritual essence of the Petrine ministry, witnessed to by John Paul II even unto death.” And “precisely this spiritual comprehension of the munus allows Benedict XVI to establish the legitimacy of his renunciation without denying the choice of his predecessor.” Thus, the decision of Joseph Ratzinger to remain as pope (emeritus) contains all of the teaching of Saint John Paul II on the spiritual essence of the Petrine munus, which remains present apart from the efficiency or ability of the one who carries it. This is why Benedict would say in his final address: “The ‘always’ is also a ‘forever’ — there can no longer be a return to the private sphere. My decision to resign the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this.”

In his Declaratio there is also a highly refined elaboration and theological meditation by the pope on the pontifical ministry, which — obviously — passed unnoticed even by insiders. According to Violi, Benedict XVI proposed in the text “two fundamental distinctions” relative to the Petrine munus:

In the first place he distinguishes between munus and executio muneris, evoking the distinction of Gratian between potestas officii and its executio and repeating the distinction between munus and its administration; in the second place he distinguishes, among the diverse activities that make up the executio, between an administrative-ministerial executio (agendo et loquendo) and a more spiritual executio (orando et patiendo).

The fulfillment of the Petrine ministry “with prayer and suffering” is not at all inferior to the executio done with action and teaching, as John Paul II demonstrated. Thus Benedict XVI wanted to demonstrate the legitimacy and the greatness of the choice of John Paul II to remain pope in his final years, when his disease was more incapacitating.

However, the times are very different compared to then (“In today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith”), and the different historical circumstances led Benedict XVI to a different choice: thus “he declared his renunciation of the ministerium. Not of the papacy, according to the dictate of the norm of Boniface VIII; not of the munus according to the dictate of Canon 332 § 2,” Violi specifies, but of the ministerium, or, as he would specify in his final audience, “of the active exercise of the ministry.” The conclusion of the canonist is clear: “The object of his irrevocable renunciation is in fact the executio muneris by means of action and words (agendo et loquendo), not the munus entrusted to him once and for all.” And “the limited renunciation of the active exercise of the munus constitutes the absolute novelty of the renunciation of Benedict XVI.”

Here we have the reason why the pope spoke in his final public address about the “novelty” of his action. We may ask ourselves what juridical foundation there is for such a path, since it has never before been taken.

Violi explains that, obviously, there is no foundation for this action in Canon 332 § 2 of the Code of Canon Law, “which establishes discipline for a different type of resignation.” Instead, “the theological-juridical foundation is the plenitudo potestatis sanctioned by Canon 331. Right there in the group of powers inherent in the office, there is also included the privative power, or the free and incontestable faculty of being able to renounce all of his powers without renouncing the munus.” In this way, according to Violi, “Benedict XVI exercised the fullness of power, depriving himself of all of the powers inherent in his office, for the good of the Church, without, however, abandoning the service of the Church.”

With a “supreme act of self-denial” that “constitutes in reality the supreme act of power,” the pope in this manner “has embodied the highest form of power in the Church, following the example of the One who, holding all power in his hands, laid aside his garments, not thereby relinquishing his office, but rather carrying it to fulfillment in the service of men, that is, for our salvation.” When Violi explains that “the spiritual munus, in order to be fully accomplished, may include the renunciation of its administration,” and that “this does not in any way cause the renunciation of the mission inherent in the office, but rather constitutes its truest fulfillment,” we are very close to the philosophical category of a “state of exception” of Carl Schmitt. It was precisely this category that was evoked in the fundamental address of Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the closest collaborator of Benedict XVI, discussing his resignation.

The category was noted and masterfully explained by Guido Ferro Canale,92 who recalled a page of the German thinker, Schmitt, obviously referring to the State:

The sovereign is the one who decides on the state of exception . . . . Here, the “state of exception” is to be understood as a general concept of the doctrine of the State, and not as an emergency ordinance or a state of besiegement. . . . In fact, not every unusual power, not every emergency police measure or ordinance is thus a state of exception: it is rather a competence unlimited in principle, that is, the suspension of the entire order of law that is in force. If this situation occurs, it is clear that the State continues to exist, while the law is lost.93

The allusion to this category by Gänswein, who is to some extent the public “voice” of Benedict XVI, occurred in two places in this fundamental discourse. First he said: “Still today, many continue to perceive this new situation as a sort of state of exception willed by Heaven.” Then he made this term his own by making it the key to understanding the decision of Benedict XVI:

Since February 11, 2013, the papal ministry is no longer what it was before. It is and remains the foundation of the Catholic Church; however, it is a foundation that Benedict XVI profoundly and permanently transformed in his pontificate of exception (Ausnahmepontifikat).

Ferro Canale has drawn out the consequences of this reasoning:

The reading seems rather clear: The pontificate of Benedict XVI became a “pontificate of exception” by virtue of his resignation and at the very moment of his resignation. But why was this expression reported in German as Ausnahmepontifikat? . . . Ausnahme: literally, “outside the law.” A state of affairs that cannot be regulated a priori and thus, if it occurs, requires the suspension of the entire juridical order. An Ausnahmepontifikat would thus be a pontificate that suspends in some way the ordinary rules of functioning of the Petrine office, or, as Archbishop Gänswein said, “renews” the office. And, if the analogy holds, this suspension would be justified, or rather imposed [upon the Church], by an emergency that was impossible to address in any other way.

As you may be intuiting at this point, the choice to become “pope emeritus” represents something enormous and contains a secret of colossal importance for the Church. It is stupefying that everyone in the ecclesiastical and media world has sought to ignore such resounding facts94 — even to the point of dismissing not only the treatise of Violi, but even an event as striking as the above-mentioned conference of Archbishop Gänswein.

ON MAY 21, 2016, ARCHBISHOP GEORG GÄNSWEIN, at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome, participated as a speaker at the presentation of the book of Roberto Regoli, Oltre la crisi della Chiesa. Il pontificato di Benedetto XVI [Beyond the Crisis of the Church: The Pontificate of Benedict XVI]. His intervention was not at all suited to the occasion, but was rather surprising because he did not limit himself to a few harmless observations, more or less celebrative, nor did he limit himself to personal recollections.

As we have already seen in the preceding pages with regard to the conclave of 2005, among the most burning and particular questions Gänswein addressed was the taboo subject of the resignation of Benedict XVI and above all his “emeritus papacy” and the situation this has created at the summit of the Church. He did so in a way that seemed unscrupulous to some, especially because Gänswein has remained Prefect of the Papal Household under Pope Bergoglio as well.

But it can be said that in this surprising conference, the personal secretary and primary (and now only) collaborator of Benedict XVI did not present hypotheses, did not advance his own ideas, but, in an obvious way, shed light on the most profound intentions and reasoning of Benedict. He spoke with the confident tone—and the lack of fear of being refuted—that only one who speaks, if not “in the name of the interested party,” then at least with his placet, can have. For if the opposite were true, it would be quite reckless and he would thereby expose himself to disastrous refutations.

In fact, notwithstanding the noteworthy content of his address, there was not the slightest nod of a denial from Benedict XVI, just as there was also no recall from the Vatican (although the disappointment in Casa Santa Marta must have been strong). After all, there is a theoretical architecture of such boldness in this address that it is difficult to conceive that an active Prefect of the Papal Household could allow himself to make it, if only for the sake of prudence. And there is a theological thought that truly shines with the lucidity and geniality of Joseph Ratzinger.

This address, for now, represents, to all effects, the most explicit explanation of the choice of Benedict XVI and his “actual status.” It was deliberately ignored, one could almost say “silenced,” when it should have made far more of a clamor and should have triggered a huge debate within the Church, which says a lot about the climate surrounding the question of the papacy. Thus we need to analyze this explosive conference point by point.95 Here I will limit myself to proposing “flashes,” as if doing underlining and making comments.

First of all, it is significant that Gänswein begins by affirming that this is “an epoch without precedent” in the history of the Church, and then quickly uses a most unusual phrase: “As in the time of Peter, so also today, the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church continues to have one legitimate pope. And yet, for the last three years, we are living with two living successors of Peter among us.” The phrase that follows, moreover, leads one to think that the “two living successors of Peter” (who, Gänswein specifies, “are not in a competitive relationship between themselves”) have an equal status, without either one being subordinate to the other. The thought continues: “Many people even today continue to see this new situation as a kind of God-willed state of exception [eine Art göttlichen Ausnahmezustandes].” As we have already considered, this is where Gänswein introduces the Schmittian category of the “state of exception,” but even as something “willed by God” (a thought that he reports is attributed to “many”) . Then proposing the (rhetorical?) question, “But is it already time to assess the pontificate of Benedict XVI?,” he immediately explains that the answer is no, because “popes can correctly be judged and classified only ex post.”

One must therefore conclude that the pontificate of Benedict XVI is not finished. And in evidence of this, Gänswein cites Regoli’s book, which recalls the case of Pope Gregory VII, “who at the end of his life died in exile in Salerno — a failure in the opinion of many of his contemporaries.” And yet today, we can say that that great pope, “amid the controversies of his time, decisively shaped the face of the Church for the generations that followed.” What were those controversies? That saintly pope was a great reformer of the Church of the 11th century, but he has passed into history chiefly because of his battle against lay investiture, that is, a fierce clash with the political power of the Emperor, in the person of Henry V from whom — by means of the Dictatus Papae of 1075 — he took away the primacy, attributing it to the papacy; above all he took away from political power the right to interfere in the life of the Church. The evocation of Gregory VII thus leads us to serious reflection.

Then Gänswein emphasizes that the “renunciation” of Benedict XVI—who “decided not to give up the name he had chosen” — is different from that of Pope Celestine V who, after he had abandoned the papacy, “again became Pietro dal Morrone.”

And then we arrive at one of Gänswein’s most surprising and sensational affirmations:

Since February 2013 the papal ministry is therefore no longer what it was before. It is and remains the foundation of the Catholic Church; and yet it is a foundation that Benedict XVI has profoundly and permanently transformed during his pontificate of exception (Ausnahmepontifikat).

We are looking at an exceptional announcement: nothing less than a transformation of the papal ministry itself and the beginning of a “pontificate of exception” by Benedict XVI — using the German term that inevitably recalls Carl Schmitt. Regarding this proposal, as I have already said, Guido Ferro Canale, who gets credit for having caught this allusion, after clarifying Schmitt’s concept, notes: “An Ausnahmepontifikat would thus be a pontificate that suspends in some way the ordinary rules of functioning of the Petrine office, or, as Archbishop Gänswein said, ‘renews’ the office itself.”

Then Ferro Canale asks himself whether “a concept with similar implications” could be “employed lightly” by Gänswein, “in an imprecise way, perhaps only to allude to the difficulties of framing the situation created by the resignation according to the ordinary rules and concepts.” But the jurist Ferro Canale answers his own question negatively: “This does not seem possible to me for three reasons.” Which are:

1. Such impropriety of language may not be presumed, mostly because we are dealing with one of the most well-known concepts of a scholar who, at least in Germany, is known lippis et tonsoribus.96

2. The emphasis, evident from the title, on the effects and scope of the resignation, which is certainly not considered a possibility of rare occurrence but is quietly provided for by the Code of Canon Law (consider that it is defined [by Gänswein], among other things, as a “well-considered step of millennial historical significance”).

3. The apparent references to the critical concrete present situation that, it seems to me, are clearly recognizable in Gänswein’s presentation. Consider what he says about the election of Benedict XVI “following a dramatic struggle.”97

In effect, what Gänswein goes on to affirm—even interpreting the lightning that struck the cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica on February 11, 2013, as a “dramatic” sign — demonstrates that we are at “a historical turning point” framed by the (literal) “conflict” between the “Salt of the Earth Party” (which supported Ratzinger in the conclave of 2005) and the “St. Gallen Group” (which instead supported Bergoglio).

Gänswein’s reference to the “pontificate of exception” or “state of exception” is, thus, a well-considered and appropriate philosophical appeal. Of course, his reference to this expression does not clarify the matter, but rather raises in its own turn a further series of questions that are even more serious and that remain, for now, unresolved. In fact, Archbishop Gänswein praises Regoli, the author of the book, because “he does not advance the claim that he fully probes and explains this last, mysterious step,” which he (Gänswein) defines as “a step of millennial historical significance.” If Benedict XVI’s own collaborator defines it as “mysterious” and yet to be explained, it is obvious that we are looking at something enormous that has not yet been revealed. The very fact that it cannot be said why (at least for now) lends weight to any hypothesis.

However, there is something in particular that was clarified by Archbishop Gänswein regarding the text of the Declaratio. He explained that the “key word” to understand is munus. And thus we could say that his agreement with the interpretation of Stefano Violi is very evident. Moreover, Gänswein made an explanation that is objectively explosive:

Before and after his resignation, Benedict understood and understands his task as participation in such a “Petrine ministry.” He has left the papal throne and yet, with the step made on February 11, 2013, he has not at all abandoned this ministry. Instead, he has complemented the personal office with a collegial and synodal dimension, as a quasi-shared ministry [als einen quasi gemeinsamen Dienst].

Since the election of his successor Francis, on March 13, 2013, there are not therefore two popes, but de facto an expanded ministry — with an active member and a contemplative member. This is why Benedict XVI has not given up either his name, or the white cassock. This is why the correct name by which to address him even today is “Your Holiness”; and this is also why he has not retired to a secluded monastery, but within the Vatican—as if he had only taken a step to the side to make room for his successor and a new stage in the history of the papacy that he, by that step, enriched with the “headquarters” of his prayer and his compassion located in the Vatican Gardens.

We are looking at affirmations of such audacity that they ought to make all the “authorized personnel” jump!

The first phrase leaves us almost to understand that there is not any substantial difference between “before and after” the “resignation,” because at both times Benedict equally participates in the “Petrine ministry.” In fact, it reiterates the fact that the pope “has not at all abandoned this ministry.”

The most enigmatic part is the place where the “collegial dimension” is considered, “as if [quasi] it is a ministry shared in common.” This is a concept to which canonists and theologians have found much to object, and it needs to be untangled sooner or later. In the following line, Gänswein cuts out the prudent use of “quasi” and clearly affirms that “there are not therefore two popes, but de facto an expanded ministry—with an active member and a contemplative member.” Therefore he presents Benedict’s XVI step not as a step backwards, but as “a step to the side.” And then he adds another explosive statement:

He has not abandoned the office of Peter— something that would have been entirely impossible for him after his irrevocable acceptance of the office in April 2005. By an act of extraordinary courage, he has instead renewed this office (even against the opinion of well-meaning and undoubtedly competent advisers), and with a final effort he has strengthened it (as I hope). Of course, only history will prove this.

Here the pope’s secretary is even more explicit. He not only denies that Benedict XVI has “abandoned” the office of Peter, but he even denies that he could do this, considering as “irrevocable” the “yes” pronounced at the moment of his election. We need to recall that this affirmation corresponds perfectly to what, as we have seen, Benedict XVI said in his last public address: “The ‘always’ is also a ‘for ever’ — there can no longer be a return to the private sphere. My decision to resign the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this.”

But here there opens up the huge question: Since, according to canon law, as has been seen, there is a new pope from the exact moment in which the man elected pronounces his “yes” accepting the election,98 if this “yes” is not revoked, then in fact there is no renunciation of the papacy. Benedict XVI did not have the intention of abandoning the papacy and has not revoked “the acceptance” of it that he made in April 2005. He even considers his acceptance to be “irrevocable.” Thus — by simple logic — he is still the pope.

AT THIS POINT WE WOULD HAVE EXPECTED THAT AN address of such consequence would have stirred up an enormous ruckus, a whirlpool of hypotheses, and endless discussions. Instead, practically nothing.99 But subsequently, there have been confirmations of what Gänswein said that are truly surprising and very important.

On October 26, 2016, five months after Gänswein’s address, a remarkable interview was published that, at least in Italy, did not garner much attention. And yet the one speaking was the “number 2” of the Church, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, who at the time was Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (the role that Cardinal Ratzinger had held during the pontificate of John Paul II). Müller, who is also the editor of the opera omnia of Ratzinger, released an interview through the German section of Vatican Radio. Here is what he said:

For the first time in the history of the Church, we have the case of two legitimate living popes. Certainly, only Pope Francis is the pope, but Benedict is the pope emeritus, and therefore he is in some way still linked to the papacy. This unprecedented situation must be addressed theologically and spiritually. As to how this should be done, there are different opinions. I have demonstrated that despite all the differences regarding their persons and character, which are simply natural, at the same time the internal link between them must be made visible.

But, the interviewer asked, in what does this “internal link” consist? Müller responded: “It is that of confessing [proclaiming faith in] Jesus Christ, which is the ratio essendi, the true foundation of the papacy, which holds the Church together in unity in Christ.” Perhaps here one may glimpse the way in which Müller for years offered a lifeboat to Francis (until he was removed from his office by Francis), to help him continue his work while remaining within the tracks of orthodoxy and in full communion with the pope emeritus. Certain choices of Bergoglio could have been avoided.100

It is probable that Benedict himself approved this outstretched hand of Müller towards Bergoglio. Seen in this light, we may better understand the collaborative tone that the pope emeritus has used toward Francis in his rare public remarks, and we may also understand the volume that Müller wrote at that time, attempting to reconcile the two pontificates, under the title Benedict and Francis: Successors of Peter at the Service of the Church. We now know, however, that that extended hand was refused by Bergoglio, and in the worst way: he removed Müller from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

But — returning to the interview with the German cardinal — the journalist still asked: “What does having two popes contemporaneously offer to the Church?” Müller’s response is astonishing, and is in accord with what Gänswein had declared:

Both exercise an office that was not theirs to give to themselves and that is not even theirs to define, an office that has already been “defined” by Christ himself, as it has been understood by the believing conscience of the Church. And each one experiences in the papal office, as with every other office in the church, a burden that can only be carried with the help of grace.

These are remarkable words, especially because they were spoken by the one who was, at that time, the highest doctrinal authority in the Church. Müller did not respond to the question by saying, as others do, that Benedict XVI is no longer the pope, that he is retired and no longer has a role in the Church. He did not say that he is something similar to “bishops emeriti,” as Papa Bergoglio said. His answer was entirely different.

Müller affirmed that Benedict XVI and Bergoglio “both exercise an office” that is “the papal office.” He said “exercise” using the present tense. And he added that this unprecedented situation of “two legitimate living popes” “must be addressed theologically and spiritually.” Thus, Müller seems to go in the same direction as the remarkable address of Archbishop Georg Gänswein. Shortly after Müller’s interview, the Vaticanist Aldo Maria Valli took his turn at interviewing the German cardinal, and asked him to give an explanation of his bold words. And here is how the prelate responded:

In effect we are living in a very special phase of the history of the Church: we have the pope, but also the pope emeritus . . . . Their two biographies are profoundly different, but also united, and what unites them is the Petrine ministry. They exercise an office together, at the service of the Faith and of the Church. An office that they have not given to themselves, but that comes from Jesus.

Again in this case, the use of the present tense is striking: “They exercise an office together.” And shortly afterwards, Müller added: “Benedict and Francis . . . dedicate themselves fully to the mission of the successor of Peter, and this is a great richness for the Church.” It is remarkable that such a declaration made by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith coincides — I will say it again — with what Archbishop Gänswein also declared. In fact, the interviewer Valli commented: “It thus seems we may understand that, for Cardinal Müller, we are looking at—to use the categories employed by Archbishop Georg Gänswein— a sort of ‘shared ministry,’ ‘collegial’ or ‘synodal,’ within which each one makes a specific contribution.”101

We must again emphasize the exceptional nature of the response of the Prefect of the former Holy Office affirming that both popes “dedicate themselves” (using the present tense of the verb) “to the mission of the successor of Peter,” even using the emphatic word “fully.” By pure logic, this means that they are both carrying out the Petrine ministry.

But this only thickens the fog, because it refocuses the spotlight on the strange “resignation” of Benedict XVI. What sort of “resignation” is it if he remains the pope, a pope who continues to “fully” carry out the Petrine ministry? It was not necessary to wait long before a confirmation came from Benedict XVI himself.

In his book-length interview with Peter Seewald, Last Testament, published in 2016,102 Benedict XVI explained his present situation as pope emeritus and did so — albeit with sobriety of words — in accord with the May 2016 address of his secretary Archbishop Gänswein and with the words of Cardinal Müller. He says, in these pages, that “this step is not flight, not an attempt to escape, but rather, another way of remaining faithful to my ministry.”103

Seewald asked if his resignation had not “secularized” the papacy, reducing it to an office like so many others (which is, as we have seen, the interpretation of Hans Küng). Benedict XVI said that he rejected such “functionalism.” Then—with all due respect to Monsignor Sciacca—he drew a parallel with the case of bishops. They are now able “to leave their post” without ceasing to be bishops, because each of them can say “I am a father and that I’ll stay. One cannot simply stop being a father. That would be a functionalization and secularization, a sort of bureaucratic concept that shouldn’t apply to a bishop.” The pope emeritus recognized that

even a father’s role stops. Of course a father does not stop being a father, but he relinquishes his concrete responsibilities. He remains a father in a deep, inward sense, with a special relationship and responsibility, but without the function as such. And this is what happens also with bishops . . . . And so I think it is also clear that the pope is no superman and that his mere existence is not sufficient for conducting his role; rather, he must be able to perform functions. If he steps down, he remains in an inner sense within the responsibility he took on, but not in the function.104

Certainly, this explanation leaves us with a thousand questions, because Benedict XVI did not want to be called “bishop emeritus of Rome” but “pope emeritus.” There will be those who have canonical and theological problems with this title (is the papacy like a “fourth level” of the sacrament of Holy Orders?). Furthermore, there has not been any formal act that defines the prerogatives of the pope emeritus, as there was for bishops.

On the other hand, what is proven here is that the intention of Benedict XVI was not that of resigning from being pope, that is, from being “father,” because he believes that this is impossible: even “if he resigns, he retains the responsibility that he has assumed.” He is pope “for ever.”

Thus, if those who disagree with Benedict wish to challenge this conception of the facts, they would need to address the question of the validity of a dubious or partial resignation. The resignation of a pope emeritus is a specific case that the ancient canonical treatises do not consider, but other forms of doubtful resignation are considered invalid.105 It would be interesting, at this point, to ask by whom, when, and how the invalidity of such a doubtful resignation would be proclaimed, with all the consequences that would ensue concerning the validity of the subsequent conclave and the acts of the newly elected pope.

If we look at the history of the Church (in which there are many cases of popes and antipopes simultaneously existing), we find that there is a certain confusion in this matter. Over the course of the centuries there have been many controversial situations. Some men who were considered popes while they were alive were later no longer considered such, and several cases have never been clarified, not having an official and definitive judgment passed on them. It is preeminently a juridical and historical question. Therefore, historians and jurists may be able to help by clarifying many obscure points. The problem remains unresolved.

ON THE OTHER HAND, IT IS EVIDENT THAT THE explanation given by Benedict XVI in his book (making a parallel with bishops emeriti) is only a provisional answer or one small part of an immense “what has not been said” of a mystery the pope is guarding — a mystery that cannot be revealed, at least for now.

This is also shown by the way in which he has responded to those who have sought a definitive clarification from him. It happened when the Vaticanist Andrea Tornielli, who is very close to Bergoglio, reached out to Benedict XVI by means of a message, asking for a final answer to the articles that, one year after his resignation, were raising doubts about the matter due to his title of pope emeritus.

On the one hand, Benedict XVI wrote that “there is not the slightest doubt concerning the validity of my resignation of the Petrine ministry” (and what else could he say?). On the other hand, when asked to explain why he still continued to have the title of pope and to be called “His Holiness Benedict XVI” and to wear white, he literally said: “The reason I kept the white robe and the name of Benedict was simply a practical one. At the moment of the resignation there were no other garments available.”106 This answer can be defined only as an amusing irony to evade the question and not truly respond to the interviewer, since nobody can seriously believe that Benedict remained pope emeritus because he had only white robes and could not find any others. Apart from the fact that the title of “pope emeritus” and the name “His Holiness Benedict XVI” cannot be motivated by wardrobe shortages, it is rather difficult to believe that from February 11 to 28, 2013, not one cardinal’s or bishop’s robe could be found in the Vatican, the shops of the Borgo Pio and all of Rome.

Such a surreal response seems to be a signal to make us understand that he could not respond, that this question touches something inaccessible, which remains a secret because of its highly sensitive nature. In fact, this response is in contradiction with everything Benedict XVI would say following this interview, as well as with what he had already said on February 27, 2013. And also with what Archbishop Gänswein would say in 2016. Thus, on the one hand we encounter something unspeakable, which Benedict XVI protects by giving answers that don’t really make sense and are abstruse and ironic, while on the other hand the pope emeritus is always leaving little clues that, for those who want to understand, give them a glimpse of the truth.

This is also what happened with the two letters of Benedict replying to Cardinal Brandmüller that were published in the German newspaper Bild in September 2018.107 The cardinal has been a long-time friend, admirer, and supporter of Joseph Ratzinger, but has remained very opposed to his resignation and has vehemently expressed his disappointment in several articles and interviews.108 In doing so he has almost blamed Benedict for the disastrous situation in which the Church finds itself under the pontificate of Bergoglio (who, however, was not elected by Benedict XVI, but by the cardinals). Moreover, Brandmüller has also contested the title of “pope emeritus,” which, he says, “is extraneous to the entire canonical-theological tradition.”

This criticism by his friend was very strong. Thus Benedict XVI responded to him with two private letters of November 9 and November 23, 2017. They are letters in which his bitterness is evident, albeit with a humble and gentle tone.109 It is obvious that the pope emeritus knows that every one of his written letters may become public and often does. Thus he is most careful in how he expresses himself, as if he were speaking in front of an audience. If he wants to communicate something of significance, he does so, as it were, in code, using expressions that have different ways of being read. In these two letters, which quickly became public, as I have said, Benedict appeals to the paradoxical argument, analogous to the one of there being only one robe in the wardrobe: he says that his problem was that of needing to remain “inaccessible to the media,” which — he says — would not have been possible if he had returned to being a cardinal.

Ratzinger knows well that this argument is totally inconsistent (just like his “wardrobe argument”), because there are cardinals of the Curia — such as Cardinal Andrzej Maria Deskur — who have spent their final years totally inaccessible behind the Vatican walls. He could easily live right where he lives now, but without being pope emeritus. There is no relationship between these two things (being inaccessible to the media and the title of pope emeritus). Furthermore, it must be said that, as pope emeritus, he has made a book-length interview, he has granted other interviews, he has written prefaces and messages, he has received and continues to receive many people. It is difficult to think that the problem was one of needing to be inaccessible.

Thus, in these two letters to Cardinal Brandmüller, Benedict puts forward arguments that are open to a double interpretation: one for the media and for the Curia (and they seem to be harmless expressions, even if they are contradictory or incomprehensible); and one for those who are able to comprehend their message. For example, he asks, regarding former popes who resigned, “What were they afterwards? Pope emeritus? Or something different?” From the historical point of view, this question is already clear: there were those who returned to being a monk, like Celestine V, and there were those who returned to being a cardinal, like Gregory XII. Ratzinger knows all this perfectly well, and he knows that never in the history of the Church — right up to John Paul II — was there ever talk of a “pope emeritus.” But then why ask these questions?

In order to understand why, keep reading: “We do not know if such a return to simply being a cardinal would have been effectively possible. In my case, certainly it would not have made sense that I should affirm that I was simply returning to the cardinalate.” May it not be that Benedict — by means of these strange considerations, which seem to be a bit absurd from the historical point of view — is simply repeating once more what he said in his final public address, that the Petrine munus endures “for ever”? In effect, with this interpretation (which only a few would be able to pick up on) these questions acquire great significance, they become pertinent and reasonable.

In another passage, Benedict XVI expresses concern because, had he returned to being a cardinal, “in that cardinal would have been seen the ex-pope,” thus creating confusion. But if he had done this, wouldn’t he have been in fact an ex-pope? In this case, what would be the problem with being seen as the ex-pope? Does he mean that he did not want to be mistaken for someone who was formerly the pope, that he did not want to be considered an “ex”-pope? Let’s put this concretely. If somebody wants to avoid misunderstandings, and wants people to understand that he is not the pope, what should he do: should he become a cardinal and dress as a cardinal, or should he call himself “pope” and retain the name of a pope and the dress of a pope? Obviously, he should choose the first option. In contrast, the choice that Joseph Ratzinger made is the second option, and this offers the true key for understanding his strange comments and what he really thinks.

Finally, in the two letters there are some things that are very clear and very important. Above all, both of them display Benedict’s great alarm over the present situation in the Church (under Bergoglio),110 so much so that Bild gave its article this headline: “Pope Benedict XVI Is Very Worried About His Church.” Moreover, Benedict knew well to write to one of the cardinals who has shown himself to be most critical regarding Bergoglio (he is one of the authors of the Dubia, a document that critiques and requests clarification from Pope Francis on Amoris Laetitia and in particular on the question of giving Communion to the divorced and “remarried”) . From what we read in these two letters, there is not a trace of any reprimand for this criticism, nor any distancing from Brandmüller. There is instead an expression of great concern for the present situation of the Church, which coincides with the cardinal’s concern.

But the most significant “sign” is found at the end of the second letter, because, after having responded to his cardinal-friend, he concludes the letter, “With my Apostolic Blessing.” Who is able to give the apostolic blessing? Only the pope. True, it may also be given (through a general delegation that was established by Pope Benedict XIV) by the titular bishop of a diocese, but not by the bishop emeritus, at least not if he is not specifically delegated to do so. In any case, the titular bishop may give the Apostolic Blessing only on certain solemn feasts, following a certain ritual, and no more than three times per year. (He may also subdelegate to priests the right to give this blessing.) It is always given “in the name of the Roman Pontiff.”111 This is also true when it is given during certain rites and celebrations of the sacraments. So, what then are we to think of this expression contained in the letter of Benedict XVI? To impart the Apostolic Blessing in this manner, as Benedict has done, simply signifies that he is the pope, because giving this blessing is one of the prerogatives of the pope (not the pope emeritus, but the pope).

In a similar way—to draw a comparison—in the rules of the Italian government, the President of the Republic may grant a pardon. But the President-emeritus of the Republic may not do so. The one who grants a pardon must have the ius (the right). He may have the ius and not exercise it (and this is probably the case for Benedict XVI), but he does not lose the ius simply because he refuses to actively use it. An Italian citizen who has the right to vote may refuse to participate in elections, but this does not mean that he loses the ius: he does not become an “ex-voter” but only a voter who does not use his power. Perhaps, then, the true message of the letter of Benedict XVI is properly contained in that Apostolic Blessing . . . . There is much to reflect on.

There is also another significant expression that appears in the conclusion: “Let us pray instead, as you did at the end of your letter, that the Lord may come to the aid of his Church.” These are words that once again confirm the dramatic judgment Benedict XVI has about the present moment of the Church, but also words that give us a sense of the mission of intercession in which he is now engaged.

As an aside to these considerations, it must be said that Bild emphasized other aspects of these two letters. For example, the historical reference made by Benedict to Pius XII, who, in 1944, knowing that he was at risk of being deported by the Germans who then occupied Rome, wrote a letter of resignation that would go into effect if such a terrible thing happened. Various newspapers asked what could be the reason for this reference to a pope threatened by the Nazis: by whom did Benedict feel threatened? Even the Huffington Post ran an article about the letter with the headline: “I Am Like Pius XII Persecuted by the Nazis.”112 But did Pope Benedict really intend to give this message, or could this be a far-fetched interpretation?

It is difficult to respond. We lean toward the second possibility. Naturally, after that reference to the case of Pius XII, the phrase from the beginning of his pontificate was recalled (“Pray for me that I may not flee for fear of the wolves”), and reference was made to “an episode reported by Der Spiegel in May 2015, according to which Benedict was worried about being poisoned, so much so that, in October 2012, a few months before his resignation, the president of the state office of criminal investigations of Bavaria supposedly went to Rome to investigate any lapses of security in the preparation of the pope’s food.”113

At that time, the news led others to re-read in this light a passage of Benedict’s last public address in which he quoted Saint Benedict:

I no longer bear the power of office for the governance of the Church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, in the enclosure of Saint Peter. Saint Benedict, whose name I bear as pope, will be a great example for me in this. He showed us the way for a life which, whether active or passive, is completely given over to the work of God.

It is well known that the holy monk was called several times to take charge of various communities as abbot, but they repeatedly tried to poison him, and so he went back to being a hermit.

May these historical references (to Pius XII and Saint Benedict) really be interpreted in reference to the present situation of Benedict XVI? Perhaps it is excessive to think so. Most probably, the unspeakable secret behind the pope emeritus’s choice to resign is something entirely different: it is exquisitely spiritual. And in these times, which are so far from the spiritual dimension, his choice is not understood. The man of God is not understood — especially if he is God’s Vicar— when he thinks and lives “according to God” and not according to men.

4
The (True) Power of
the Pope (Emeritus)

No one is richer, no one is more powerful, no one is freer than the one who knows how to abandon himself and everything and put himself in the lowest place.

Imitation of Christ II, 11, 4

Here is the reason why at a certain point the politicians are always mistaken ... : those who are purely politicians do not know the theological reason that dominates history.

— Cardinal Giuseppe Siri

MISUNDERSTO OD AND DISPARAGED IN HIS decision to resign, Benedict XVI explained the reason for his decision with many explicit statements, which, however, have been overlooked, because he spoke them with simplicity and because they referred to the spiritual essence of the papacy and were understood as circumstantial statements. But instead they were words full of great significance.

Here they are. In his Declaration he said succinctly: “With regard to myself, I also wish to serve devotedly the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.” Only if we consider prayer the most powerful and efficacious action that man can undertake can we understand the extraordinary sense of these words. If, however, we consider prayer simply as an act of devotion, harmless if not useless, an occupation for old people or the sick, an act of desperation for those who are helpless in the face of the difficulties of life, a message in a bottle abandoned to the waves and destined not to be read by anyone, then we will see the resignation of Benedict XVI the way the world sees it, as a choice to go and rest in retirement.

Here, instead, we are looking at a true and personal call on the part of God: the call to a mission. This is what Benedict XVI explained openly in his last Angelus address on February 24, 2013. The Gospel reading for that Sunday presented the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor. The pope reflected profoundly on that mysterious event and explained:

In meditating on this passage of the Gospel, we can learn a very important lesson from it: first of all, the primacy of prayer, without which the entire commitment to the apostolate and to charity is reduced to activism.

Then he entered directly into his personal question:

Dear brothers and sisters, I hear this word of God as addressed to me in particular at this moment of my life. Thank you! The Lord is calling me “to scale the mountain,” to devote myself even more to prayer and meditation. But this does not mean abandoning the Church; indeed, if God asks this of me, it is precisely so that I may continue to serve her with the same dedication and the same love with which I have tried to do so until now, but in a way more suited to my age and strength.

These are very significant words: “The Lord is calling me to ‘scale the mountain’. . . but this does not mean abandoning the Church; indeed, if God asks me this,” it is in order to serve her in another way.

I do not know if those who listened to or read this discourse took account of the import of these words, but we can be certain that he who spoke them was well aware of it. If the choice made by the pope emeritus was his own idea, would Pope Benedict have attributed it to God; would he have said “he calls me to scale the mountain” and “he asks this of me”? I believe absolutely not. It is very important to keep this in mind.

In his final audience, then, on February 27, 2013, he once again offered an explanation:

In these last months, I have felt my energies declining, and I have asked God insistently in prayer to grant me his light and to help me make the right decision, not for my own good, but for the good of the Church . . . . I am not abandoning the cross, but remaining in a new way at the side of the crucified Lord. I no longer bear the power of office for the governance of the Church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, in the enclosure of Saint Peter.

Thus, Benedict XVI tells us that light came to him from God in prayer, and that his decision is to “remain,” but “in a new way at the side of the crucified Lord.”

The supreme royalty of Christ is revealed in his stripping himself of his divinity, even to the ultimate self-emptying of the Cross. His Vicar on earth felt himself personally called to the imitation of Christ:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5–8)

The obedience of the Son in emptying himself (kenosis) is simultaneously the supreme salvific act of the Redeemer. The obedience shown in emptying himself — offering himself — is the same to which the pope has been called for a mission that is in the mystery of God. This is clearly seen in Benedict XVI’s homily at the beginning of his pontificate, in which he stated that his program was not to do his own will but rather always and only to obey the will of God:

Dear friends! At this moment there is no need for me to present a program of governance. . . . My real program of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that he himself will lead the Church at this hour of our history.114

Thus, listening to the pope and trusting him as he deserves, we ought to consider the choice of the pope emeritus not as the fruit of a “project” of Benedict XVI, but as his own personal act of obedience, which — we imagine — must have cost him a very great deal.

In fact, this man who is so wise, one of the greatest intellects of our time, has lived out his relationship with God (also as the pope, above all as the pope) with the trusting abandonment of a child:

I should like to invite all of us to renew our firm confidence in the Lord, to entrust ourselves like children into God’s arms, certain that those arms always hold us, enabling us to press forward each day, even when the going is rough.

So he said in his final discourse of February 27, 2013. In the light of all this, perhaps we also ought to try to better understand a strange expression used by Archbishop Gänswein in his famous conference at the Gregorian University, where he said: “Many still today continue to perceive this new situation as a sort of state of exception willed by Heaven.”

Who are these “many”? May this not be an impersonal and indirect way of leading people to understand that this “state of exception,” or better, this “pontificate of exception,” that the pope emeritus is living is — precisely — “willed by Heaven”? And that Benedict XVI has entrusted himself to the design of God, accepting an exceptional task?

How this call from God manifested itself and what it means precisely, we cannot say. In the summer of 2013, a Catholic news agency that is usually well-respected by the Vatican reported — perhaps a bit unprofessionally — that during one of his private talks the pope emeritus let slip a few sensational words concerning his choice: “God told me to do it.” There followed a denial and nothing was then clarified. It is very unlikely that these literal words would have appeared on the lips of a man who is always so extremely prudent, who does not allow a syllable to escape without carefully weighing it. He might have spoken of something like “an inspiration received from God,” but in the end it is very close to what he said publicly.

According to the news agency, Benedict XVI immediately clarified that “it was not any sort of apparition or a phenomenon of that nature; rather it was ‘a mystical experience’ in which the Lord caused to be born in his heart an ‘absolute desire’ to remain one -on-one with Him, recollected in prayer.” So his choice was not a choice to flee from the world but rather to “take refuge in God.”115 After all, Benedict XVI had already expressed everything openly and publicly in his final Angelus address, where he explained that “the Lord is calling me to ‘scale the mountain,’” not in order to “abandon the Church; indeed, if God asks this of me,” it is to “serve her” in a new way.

Except that — curiously — Benedict XVI was never truly listened to. In his official and public statements he ought to be taken completely literally: the Lord “called” him to the mountain like Moses: “He is asking this of me.” Now it is clear that, if we re-read the whole affair from this point of view, suddenly everything becomes understandable—including the ways Benedict XVI has avoided giving explanations of a juridical-canonical nature. It is objectively a “state of exception,” as well as, in the expression of Archbishop Gänswein, a “pontificate of exception,” which presupposes an absolutely exceptional situation in the history of the Church and of the world.

This prompts a reflection on the papacy and its prerogatives because, although Benedict XVI has had no power of government, he has, by being rooted in prayer and the spiritual essence of the papacy, represented the true, great silent obstacle to the “revolution” that has intended (and still intends) to make itself realized within the Church. In this task, he surely feels the particular closeness and inspiration of his holy predecessor and friend. After all, in the first message of his pontificate on April 20, 2005, speaking of John Paul II, he said: “I seem to feel his strong hand clasping mine; I seem to see his smiling eyes and hear his words ... : ‘Do not be afraid!’”

THE FIRST AND GREATEST HELP THAT BENEDICT HAS given to the lost Christianity of the Bergoglian epoch is above all the texts of his magisterium (and also of his books), which are a priceless treasure and which are in union with the uninterrupted Tradition of the Catholic Magisterium. It would be enough to draw light from them in order to be able to walk in the darkness of the present time. And, in fact, that is what those who have opposed themselves to the dismantling of Catholic doctrine have done — beginning with the Dubia cardinals — during the two Synods on the Family and after the publication of Amoris Laetitia.

The second help is contained in his prayer, his powerful intercession as pope, which raises a supernatural wall of defense for the Church and for the faith of the simple. But there is also much that remains in the penumbra and in the discretion of spiritual counsel. Perhaps one day we will know something more of the extraordinary action of containment that Benedict XVI has carried out — thanks to the authority that everyone recognizes in him—in resisting the “revolutionary” initiatives within the Church, in order to avert the tragedy of the apostasy of the Church and of schism.

One may think of his rapport with Papa Bergoglio by recalling the legend of the Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky.116 The silence and the sweet, helpless gaze of Christ “disarms” — with his own presence, “with a smile of infinite compassion” — the threatening power of the Cardinal of Seville, one of the “Jesuits” who did not believe in the liberating power of the grace of God, but rather in his own power and that of men enslaved by clerical power: “Oh, we will allow them to sin, too; they are weak and powerless, and they will love us like children for allowing them to sin. We will tell them that every sin will be redeemed if it is committed with our permission. . . .”117 Uneasy, the Grand Inquisitor scrutinizes the face of Christ and hisses at him: “Do you look at me with sweetness and do you not even consider me worthy of your resentment?” But Jesus came to save him also, because he loved him too, and he responded to him with a kiss.118

It may well be the same silent presence of Benedict XVI that until now has averted the most serious doctrinal rifts, because — as long as he is alive — any false doctrine would be able to be delegitimized by one single word from him spoken before the eyes of the Christian people.

Naturally, it is an extreme possibility, to which the pope emeritus presumably would resort only in the case of a most serious and irreparable doctrinal error (for example, on the Eucharist) that would risk actuating a schism. But it is the simple possibility of this, the simple “presence” of Benedict XVI, that stops the revolutionaries. Who would ever have thought the eremitical silence of an old pope would have such a power of interdiction?

However— notwithstanding that he has imposed silence on himself and has not publicly contradicted Bergoglio — he has wanted to send to those who hold power in the Vatican clear signals in defense of what is essential, what is divinely instituted, which is not subject to change by anyone, not even popes: in particular, the Eucharist and the Holy Mass, since, in certain reforming circles, there are ideas being passed around of intercommunion with Protestants and perhaps even a liturgical reform that would change the Catholic Mass to be “ecumenical.”

In a discrete manner, Benedict XVI made his voice heard in May 2017 in his preface to Cardinal Robert Sarah’s book, The Power of Silence. The African prelate, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, particularly linked to Benedict XVI and John Paul II, represents the principal obstacle for those who want to further revolutionize the Catholic liturgy. Thus Benedict XVI wrote in the preface to Sarah’s book:

We ought to be grateful to Pope Francis for having placed such a master of the spiritual life at the head of the Congregation which is responsible for the celebration of the Liturgy in the Church . . . . With Cardinal Sarah, a master of silence and of interior prayer, the Liturgy is in good hands.

As Sandro Magister wrote, in reality

it is not a mystery . . . that Jorge Mario Bergoglio confined Cardinal Sarah in that office in order to neutralize him, certainly not to promote him. In fact, the pope deprived him of any effective authority, surrounded him with people who oppose him, and even publicly disavowed Sarah’s proposals . . . for the celebration of the liturgy.119

However, such a strong word of support from Benedict XVI for Cardinal Sarah made him practically untouchable, and in his position as Prefect he has made the projects of the reformers much more difficult to accomplish. In fact, they have reacted against him very angrily.120

IT MUST BE SAID THAT NOWHERE IS IT WRITTEN that a pope emeritus must hide himself and remain silent. It was Benedict XVI who chose, of his own free will, to seclude himself in silence. Perhaps he did so also to avoid being “pulled by the cassock” and manipulated. Then Pope Bergoglio, in an interview with Corriere della Sera on March 5, 2014, affirmed that “Benedict XVI is not a statue in a museum,” and he added: “He is discreet and humble. We have decided together that it would be better if he saw people, went out, and participated in the life of the Church. His wisdom is a gift of God.”

It may be that he really thought this, but it may also be that the Argentine pope hoped to find legitimization in Benedict and an authoritative cover for his revolutionary reforms. But this hope was destined to remain disappointed. Moreover, what has in fact happened is that the Vatican has asked Benedict XVI to make endorsements of Pope Bergoglio, and these requests, returned back to the sender, finish in gaffes and media fiascos.

In March 2018, the then-head of Vatican communications Dario Edoardo Viganò (not to be confused with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò) asked Joseph Ratzinger to write a preface for the eleven volumes written by various theologians to celebrate the thought of Bergoglio. The pope emeritus responded no, and added that he had not read the work, nor did he have the intention of reading it, among other reasons because those who had been asked to contribute to it were among the ones who had directly opposed the teaching of the most recent popes.

In the communications blurb that was then issued, however, the media gave credence to the idea that Benedict XVI had become an apologist of Bergoglian thought. But when, subsequently, someone noticed that there were certain parts of Ratzinger’s letter that were missing, it became apparent that things were quite different from how they had at first appeared. The end of the matter was that, as Sandro Magister wrote:

On March 17 [2018], Viganò was forced to publish the complete text of the letter and then to resign from his position as Prefect of the Vatican Communications Office. Or rather, to act as if he resigned, because the pope in fact did not dismiss him, but rather covered him with praises and renewed his mandate to carry out his mission.121

Nobody apologized to Benedict XVI. It is said that in the Vatican — above all at certain critical moments — strong attempts have been made to obtain public statements from Benedict in favor of Bergoglio, especially at times when there is more confusion among the faithful. Failing to obtain “support” for the “revolution” — as a result of the humble yet constant resistance of the pope emeritus, who does not allow himself to be exploited — at times what is used to support Bergoglio is some expression of courtesy of the pope emeritus, some circumstantial phrase or something he wrote in the past, which is interpreted, awkwardly, for the use and consumption of the present clerical power.

What is most striking is the continuous need of the apologists of Pope Bergoglio to find legitimization for his actions from Benedict XVI. This very craving for Benedict’s affirmation demonstrates on the one hand the objective authority of Benedict in the universal Church (even though he is emeritus and a silent hermit), and on the other hand the weakness of Bergoglio and his lack of authority.

For all of these complex and delicate reasons, Benedict, who at times has had to resist these “requests” heroically, must defend himself with silence, and on the rare occasions when he has intervened — always in order to confirm and defend the Catholic faith — he must do so with great discretion and a thousand courtesies. Nevertheless, his voice continues to irritate that false “Catholic progressivism” that loves to wave the banner of tolerance and dialogue with those who are far from the Church but shows itself to be unfailingly intolerant towards those who simply express their viewpoint, as does the pope emeritus.

This annoyance had to be expressed even on the occasion of Benedict XVI writing an affectionate memorial for his friend Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who died in July 2017. The simple fact that the pope emeritus was a friend and compatriot of one of the four cardinals of the Dubia aroused suspicion and irritation (even though their friendship spanned the course of decades). Benedict observed that

for him [Cardinal Meisner], a passionate shepherd and spiritual father, it was difficult to leave his office [as bishop and cardinal] precisely at a moment in which the Church has need of convincing shepherds who know how to resist the dictatorship of the spirit of the time and know how to live decisively with both faith and reason. But what also moved me is the way in which he learned to let go in the last period of his life, and that he knew how to live it with the profound certainty that the Lord does not abandon his Church, even if at times the boat is on the point of capsizing.

Then Benedict XVI recalled his friend’s love for Eucharistic adoration:

The other thing which always touched him anew and put him in a joyful mood was the quiet spread of Eucharistic adoration. At World Youth Day in Cologne, this was a central concern of his: that there be adoration — a silence in which only the Lord speaks to the heart. Some experts in pastoral work and liturgy were of the opinion that such a silence could not be achieved with such a large number of people. A few even considered Eucharistic adoration itself to be obsolete, saying that the Lord ought only to be received in the Eucharistic bread and not adored. But it is not possible to eat this bread like any other food. The Lord in the Sacrament of the Eucharist calls us to “receive” him in all of the dimensions of our existence. The fact that receiving the Eucharist also means adoring it became very clear. For example, Eucharistic adoration at World Youth Day in Cologne became an interior event which was memorable for many people, not just for the cardinal. This moment remained ever present to him, like a great light within him.122

Certain ultraprogressives saw a criticism of Bergoglio in the image of the boat that is on the point of capsizing, and also in the praise for Eucharistic adoration (which the Argentine pope does not favor, as is well known). Thus there were negative reactions and stinging comments.123 But in this message, Benedict simply repeated things he has always said. Each of his interventions as pope emeritus is coherent with what he has always taught and with the perennial Magisterium of the Church. How could he do otherwise?

He is a “gift of God” for Bergoglio, who has much to gain spiritually from listening to him. Unfortunately, however, after coining this beautiful phrase, it does not seem that the Argentine pope is consistent.

For example, during the days of the polemical statements concerning Ratzinger’s preface to the book of Cardinal Sarah, Bergoglio gave a homily that seemed to be a criticism of the pope emeritus, specifically for his “halfway” resignation.

It was May 30, 2017. The first reading at Mass was taken from the Acts of the Apostles (20:17–27) and — said Bergoglio — “you could call this passage ‘The Leave- Taking of a Bishop,’” because it recounts how “Paul took his leave of the Church of Ephesus that he had founded.” He went on to note:

All pastors ought to take their leave. There comes a moment when the Lord says to us: “Go to another place, go from here, go there, come after me.” And one of the steps which a pastor has to make is to prepare himself to take his leave well, to not leave only halfway. The pastor who does not learn how to take his leave has a tie to the flock that is not good, a tie that has not been purified by the Cross of Jesus. [Paul] did not appropriate the flock for himself . . . . And thus he has freedom for the journey, without any compromise, and knows that “I am not the center of the story” — this is how a pastor takes his leave.124

What is the meaning of Bergoglio’s criticism of the pastor who takes his leave “halfway”? To whom is he referring? To Benedict XVI who relinquished all the power of governance while remaining pope? Or is he alluding to the modality of the resignation, to which he has alluded at other times? We do not know.

What is certain, however, is that pastors today can draw their inspiration from — besides Saint Paul — the men of our time like Benedict XVI and John Paul II, men who followed the Pauline teaching; men of God who have never made ties so as to aim at getting positions of power and who have served God, suffering, without “appropriating the flock for themselves” with personal projects or by affirming ideas contrary to the will of the only One to whom the flock belongs. Unlike the one who, coming fresh from Argentine disasters, had the ambition to try to change the two-thousand -year Church of Christ in an “irreversible” way, these two men never considered themselves to be “the center of the story,” precisely because they knew that the Church belongs to Jesus, and they proclaimed that He “is the center of the cosmos and of history.” He alone.

Moreover, the episode from the life of Saint Paul from which Bergoglio drew inspiration says to us, if we read it attentively, something totally different. What actually happened is that the Apostle called together the elders of the Church of Ephesus and greeted them. Saint Paul reminded them of how he conducted himself from the first day of his arrival among them, and he used words that could be repeated to describe the pontificate of Benedict XVI: “I have served the Lord with all humility, amid tears and trials,” that is, amid much hostility, and “I did not at all shrink from telling you what was for your benefit, or from teaching you. . . . I earnestly bore witness for both Jews and Greeks to repentance before God and to faith in our Lord Jesus.” Paul then said that he knew that “chains and tribulations await me.” Finally, the Apostle said to them, moved with emotion:

I solemnly declare to you this day that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you, for I did not shrink from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God. Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the church of God that he acquired with his own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock. And from your own group, men will come forward perverting the truth to draw the disciples away after them. So be vigilant and remember that for three years, night and day, I unceasingly admonished each of you with tears.

In all of Bergoglio’s homily, there is no mention of any of this — the heartfelt concern of Paul for the fate of his flock, threatened by “rapacious wolves” who carry “perverse doctrines.” There is mention only of the leavetaking. Bergoglio was interested only in affirming that the pastor ought to “take his leave well, not take his leave halfway.” The pastor ought to go definitively when he resigns.

BENEDICT HAS NOT ABANDONED THE FLOCK IN PERIL. He is in prayer in his hermitage to intercede for the Church and for the world, and his comfort and his illuminating teaching continues to come to the Church by means of a thousand rivulets. The echo of his teaching was heard in another public intervention of Archbishop Gänswein on September 11, 2018, at the presentation to the Chamber of Deputies of Rod Dreher’s book The Benedict Option (Penguin Random House).

The mere fact of Gänswein’s participation in this conference made certain progressive Catholic intellectuals turn up their noses. For example, Massimo Faggioli tweeted: “I think it should not be ignored that the personal secretary of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has given high praise at a public event for an author who in the last few weeks has repeatedly accused Pope Francis of hypocrisy and various other wickedness.”125 In reality, Dreher had simply taken a position that the progressive Bergoglians did not like on Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, author of an explosive testimony on the question of abuses in the Church.126 Among other things, Dreher had said about it:

One may disagree with what was written [by Viganò], but an answer needs to be given to his questions. Not only the Holy Father or the cardinals, but also we, the laity, ought to give answers. And we ought to ask this question: Do we want a Church that is holy? Or do we want peace of mind at the cost of burying the truth?127

The intervention of Archbishop Gänswein on September 11, 2018, began by taking its cue from the symbolic significance of that date and also from the “publication of the report of the Grand Jury of Pennsylvania” that had come a few weeks earlier, in order to emphasize the drama of the situation: “Today, in fact, the Catholic Church looks full of bewilderment at her own ‘September 11,’ even if this catastrophe is not associated with only one specific date.” He explained that

the news coming from America, where we have recently learned of how many souls have been irremediably and mortally wounded by priests of the Catholic Church, is more terrible news than if we had heard the news of the sudden collapse of all the churches of Pennsylvania, together with the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.

Then Gänswein recalled the very strong words that Benedict XVI spoke about this drama when he was in the United States, “but apparently in vain, as we see today. The lament of the Holy Father did not succeed in containing the evil, nor did the formal assurances and the promises in words of a large part of the hierarchy.” The secretary of Pope Benedict also restated a passage from Dreher that meditates on other prophetic words of Benedict XVI: “In 2012 the then pope said that the spiritual crisis afflicting the West is the most serious since the fall of the Roman Empire, which happened towards the end of the fifth century. The light of Christianity is going out across the West.”

Archbishop Gänswein in turn wanted to recall the words spoken by Benedict XVI on the occasion of two crucial events. The first was on his pilgrimage to Fatima on May 11, 2010:

The Lord told us that the Church would constantly be suffering, in different ways, until the end of the world. . . . As for the new things which we can find in this message today, there is also the fact that attacks on the pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church.128

The second event was the memorable Via Crucis of 2005, during the last Holy Week of John Paul II, when, as cardinal, Ratzinger gave the meditations, and at the Ninth Station spoke these striking words:

What can the third fall of Jesus under the Cross say to us? We have considered the fall of man in general, and the falling of many Christians away from Christ and into a godless secularism. Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church? How often is the Holy Sacrament of his Presence abused, how often must he enter empty and evil hearts! How often do we celebrate only ourselves, without even realizing that he is there! How often is his Word twisted and misused! What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words! How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him! How much pride, how much self-complacency! What little respect we pay to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where he waits for us, ready to raise us up whenever we fall! All this is present in his Passion. His betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his Body and Blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison — Lord, save us (cf. Mt 8:25).129

Gänswein emphasized that this “worldliness,” this “obscuring of God,” has happened in all the Christian churches, but it is not God who has abandoned us; rather, He is no longer recognized by us for reasons that include “the shadows of sins” in the interior of the Church. The general abandonment of the Faith gives us a feeling like that of the “end times,” and at this point Archbishop Gänswein said:

Evidently in this feeling I am not alone. In May, in fact, Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht, admitted that, when he looks at the present crisis, he thinks of the “final trial through which the Church must pass” before the coming of Christ — described in paragraph 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church — and which “will shake the faith of many believers.” The persecution — continues the Catechism — which accompanies the pilgrimage of the Church on earth will reveal the “mystery of iniquity.”

This passage of Archbishop Gänswein’s talk struck many people, because the intervention of Cardinal Eijk that he cited and restated was a very vigorous exclamation published on May 7, 2018, by the Archbishop of Utrecht against the opening to intercommunion with Protestants, which the German bishops had voted for and which was endorsed by Rome. Eijk’s intervention concluded:

Observing that the bishops and, above all, the Successor of Peter fail to maintain and transmit faithfully and in unity the deposit of faith contained in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, I cannot help but think of Article 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The Church’s ultimate trial. Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.”130

These words created quite a stir, causing irritation among the Bergoglians. But Archbishop Gänswein not only cited this intervention of Cardinal Eijk, he even re-proposed those apocalyptic lines taken from the Catechism on apostasy and on the “mystery of iniquity.”

How should we respond to this immense disaster of our time and the spread of the mysterium iniquitatis? Dreher points to the example of Saint Benedict and his monks, to whom our civilization owes so much. But what motivated these men?

Gänswein recalls the response that Benedict XVI gave in his celebrated discourse at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris on September 12, 2008:

Their motivation was simple. Their goal was: quaerere Deum. Amid the confusion of the times, in which nothing seemed permanent, they wanted to do the essential — to make an effort to find what was perennially valid and lasting, life itself. They were searching for God. . . . Quaerere Deum—to seek God and to let oneself be found by him, that is today no less necessary than in former times.131

Gänswein concluded his discourse with the following words:

If this time, the Church, with the help of God, still does not know how to renew itself, the entire project of our civilization will not move forward. . . . I must sincerely admit that I perceive this time of great crisis, as is evident today to everyone, to be above all a time of grace; because in the end what “makes us free” will not be one particular effort or another, but the “truth,” as the Lord has assured us.132

The Vaticanist Aldo Maria Valli, on his blog, gave the talk this title: “Attention: Gänswein Speaks. And One Hears the Echo of Benedict.”133

PART THREE
Fatima and the Last Pope

So he went, with a few, to Jerusalem . . . .

Jerusalem lay waste, consumed with fire; ...

There were enemies without to destroy him,

And spies and self-seekers within,

When he and his men laid their hands

to rebuilding the wall.

— T. S. Eliot,

Choruses from “The Rock,” Stanza IV

5
The Power of the Powerless

Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?

John 21:15

IN HIS FIRST AUDIENCE AS POPE, ON APRIL 27, 2005, Benedict XVI wanted first of all to explain the name he had chosen. And the first reason was truly full of significance:

I wanted to be called Benedict XVI in order to create a spiritual bond with Benedict XV, who steered the Church through the period of turmoil caused by the First World War. He was a courageous and authentic prophet of peace and strove with brave courage first of all to avert the tragedy of the war and then to limit its harmful consequences. Treading in his footsteps, I would like to place my ministry at the service of reconciliation and harmony between persons and peoples, since I am profoundly convinced that the great good of peace is first and foremost a gift of God, a precious but unfortunately fragile gift to pray for, safeguard, and build up, day after day, with the help of all.134

Nobody would have imagined that Cardinal Ratzinger, upon becoming pope, would have peace as his first concern, also because there did not seem to be any apparent risk to peace. But it must never be forgotten that, during his long years at the side of John Paul II at the former Holy Office, he would have had a much more profound knowledge than common mortals of the time in which we are living.

Moreover, he chose this name because it evoked “the extraordinary figure of the great ‘Patriarch of Western monasticism,’ Saint Benedict of Nursia, co-patron of Europe” — a saint who, with his monasteries, “had an enormous influence on the spread of Christianity across the Continent.” He “is a fundamental reference point for European unity and a powerful reminder of the indispensable Christian roots of its culture and civilization.” Benedict XVI wanted to make his own the recommendation that this father of Western monasticism and of Europe gave to his monks in his Rule: “Place absolutely nothing before Christ.”135

Thus, we have: peace, Europe, its Christian roots, and the necessity of placing Christ at the center of life. All tesserae composing one single mosaic.

During the years of his pontificate, in effect, Benedict XVI found himself fighting on each of these fronts with very powerful enemies. A formidable attack was unleashed seeking to demolish (Christian) faith, especially in Europe, but also seeking to demolish reason at the same time. It is in fact the time of the mysterium iniquitatis, the time of madness over-flowing everywhere and filling the news. Among other things, the world is being crushed by an unbearable pincer, which sees on the one hand a West that has become parched by secular ideology, and on the other hand an East dominated by Islamic fundamentalism.

In the face of these two dramatic alternatives, Benedict XVI made one of his most important interventions as pope emeritus in April 2017. The occasion was the Symposium organized in honor of his 80th birthday by the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, and the bishops of Poland. The title of the gathering was: The Concept of the State in the Teaching of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger–Benedict XVI. Benedict XVI wrote a synthetic yet extremely clear message for the Symposium that, in just a few lines, perfectly identifies the problem, because he calls by its name Islamism and its conception of the State (something quite unusual in the time of President Obama and Papa Bergoglio). But Benedict XVI not only identified the problem of Islamism; he also brought up the problem of the secular Western state. His message merits another reading:

The chosen theme brings State and Church authorities together in order to discuss an essential question for the future of our continent. The clash between radical atheist conceptions of the State and the rise of a radically religious State in Islamic movements leads our time towards an explosive situation, whose consequences we experience every day. These radicalisms urgently require that we develop a convincing conception of the State, which will sustain us in confronting these challenges so that we may overcome them. In the trials of the last half-century, with the bishop-witness Cardinal Wyszyński and the Holy Father Saint John Paul II, Poland gave humanity two great figures, who not only reflected on these questions, but did so with their own suffering and lived experience, and for this reason they continue to show us the way towards the future.136

It is significant that Benedict XVI indicates as examples to be followed both Cardinal Wyszyński, symbol of the opposition against the atheist communist State, and also John Paul II, who—aside from the battle against totalitarian atheism— sought to make Europe understand that it would be disastrous to construct a European Union on a radical secularism, cutting off the spiritual roots of the European peoples and the openness to God of Europe’s two-thousand-year culture, because it is precisely in those roots that the centrality of respect for the dignity of the human person that has always characterized Europe lies.

Benedict XVI affirmed that the combination of “radical atheist conceptions of the State” on the one hand and “the rise of a radically religious State in Islamic movements” on the other “leads our time towards an explosive situation.” It was a prophetic message that recalled his historic Regensburg Address of September 2006. What is also striking in this message is his awareness of the gravity of the times in which we are living.

AND SO, WHY HAS THIS GREAT POPE BEEN ASKED TO sacrifice himself in order to intercede day and night with all the authority of the keys of Peter that grant access to the treasuries of heavenly grace? Why equip “the ‘headquarters’ of his prayer and his compassion placed in the Vatican gardens” (Gänswein) as a formidable artillery against the outbreak of Evil? For whom and for what is he interceding?

Above all, as we have said, for the Church, which is in the hour of darkness. And also for the world, which in the midst of such darkness is at risk of totally collapsing, materially as well as spiritually, considering the epochal novelties of the twentieth century: for the first time in human history, the concrete possibility of man totally destroying humanity and the entire world with his massive nuclear arsenal . . . and in just a few seconds. An unimaginable horror that, as we now know, could be realized even by a “banal” error and that has more than once been close to happening.137 An insane calamity from which — today — only prayer can protect us.

This Promethean power of being able to decree “the end of the world” seems no longer to be feared or remembered by anybody. It is a power that is not reflected upon, even though in and of itself it looms over the human race as an unmentionable apocalyptic sign over the present time, such as has never before happened. All of the popes of the second half of the 20th century repeated this, accurately. But, paradoxically, the equilibrium of terror that was guaranteed from 1945 to 1990 by the Cold War showed itself to be precisely that: an effective balancing act, but one done on a precipice hanging over the edge of a fatal chasm.

The geopolitical attitude of the world after 1990 has been instead a disequilibrium of terror, and for this reason it is much more dangerous. There has been initiated a bellicose escalation so insane that — beginning with the Yugoslavian civil war of the 1990s and continuing through the wars in Iraq and the surrounding region (above all in Syria)—in the year 2012–2013 (the year of the resignation of Benedict XVI) there was a serious and realistic threat of there being an outbreak of war in Europe between NATO, led by Obama/Clinton, and Russia, lighting the fuse of World War III. What Pope Bergoglio has called “world war in pieces” was already the antechamber of a true third World War, which would have been the last. Through an irony that is emblematic of human pride, the era that opened with the triumphalistic announcement of the “end of history” risked (and still risks) carrying us to what would really be the end of history . . . the end of everything.

Today — after the victory of Trump in the USA and the reopening of channels of international dialogue, the Doomsday Clock seems to be on standby.138 But there is the imminent risk that tensions will flare up again, because the “war party” is very strong and does not give up, and it fans the flames in all sorts of ways. A high spiritual authority like Patriarch Kirill, the supreme head of the Russian Orthodox Church, came to the point of pronouncing these words in a public discourse:

All those who love our nation must stand together, because we are entering into a critical period in the history of human civilization. This can already be seen with the naked eye. One would have to be blind not to notice that historical moments that inspire fear are drawing near, those of which John the Apostle and Evangelist spoke in the Book of the Apocalypse.139

And further: “The Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia added that the precise moment of the end of time depends on the actions of each person. He has asked the people to understand their responsibility for what regards Russia and all of humanity, and to stop ‘the movement toward the abyss of the end of history.’”140

These words perhaps clarify the choice and the present mission of Benedict XVI. Only God knows if and how much his “sacrifice” and his intercession, since 2013, has slowed or stopped the countdown. These are things kept in the book of heaven, and for the world it is idiocy to believe that the prayer and intercession of a pope could have such an impact on history, such a superhuman power. So let’s simply look at the demonstrable facts: today a conflict between NATO and Russia is seen to be much more unlikely than it was in the years of Obama/Clinton (the “world war in pieces” is for the moment more distant). There is, however, something that—for believers— explains the value and strength of the great exorcism of the world represented by the prayer and sacrifice of Benedict XVI: it is Fatima.

AS WE HAVE SEEN, ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2018, IN HIS intervention, Archbishop Georg Gänswein recalled what Benedict XVI said in his pilgrimage to Fatima in 2010. That visit was memorable because the pope—ruining the tranquilizing versions of the Curia—threw open the terrible scenario of the “Third Secret” to the future, no longer limiting it only to the past century. Does then the “secret” that has at its center two figures—the “bishop dressed in white” and an old pope—speak to us about the present? Who are these two figures?

On May 12, 2017, at Fatima, it was Pope Bergoglio himself who said that he is “the bishop dressed in white,”141 identifying himself with the protagonist of the prophecy that the shepherd children saw “as people are seen in a mirror.” Meanwhile, Benedict XVI is ever more similar to “the Holy Father, half trembling, with halting steps, afflicted with suffering and pain crossing a great city half in ruins” (the spiritual devastation of the city of God and/or the material devastation of a world full of ruins, as if destroyed by a nuclear war?). The text of Sister Lucia says that the Holy Father “advanced praying” for the souls “whom he met along his way,” dead souls of a city in ruins.

We must remember the exceptionality of Fatima in the history of the Church: “It was the first time that the Church officially recognized the historical incisiveness of a prophecy that originated in an apparition of the Blessed Virgin—a prophecy that Cardinal Sodano defined as ‘the greatest of modern times.’”142 He even compared it to Biblical prophecies. Among the many things that have come to light regarding the apparitions of Fatima, there is one that always passes unnoticed, even though it cries out: the extraordinary power of intercession that Heaven has really given to the Church. The faithful know that the Holy Mass — which, renewing the salvific sacrifice of Calvary, is celebrated practically continuously around the world twenty-four hours a day 143 — is the great exorcism that impedes the forces of Evil from destroying humanity, as well as its armor. “But the whole world receives,” said Cardinal Giuseppe Siri (1906–1989), “the whole world receives from each renewal of the Sacrifice of the Cross. The world will never find itself united, never. . . . But the world is united always and continually in one single place: in the offering of the Holy Sacrifice.”144

According to Padre Pio, “it would be easier for the earth to exist without the sun than without the Holy Mass.” For this reason, too, Benedict XVI — in union with the Church of all time—holds that the Eucharistic Sacrifice, “source and summit of the life and mission of the Church,” is a priceless and unrenounceable treasure, expressing himself, also as pope emeritus, in its defense. It is no coincidence that in his one public discourse as pope emeritus, during the ceremony at the Vatican for the 65th anniversary of his priestly ordination, he wanted to speak only about this:

“Eucharistomen” brings us to the reality of giving thanks, to that new dimension that Christ has given us. He has transformed the Cross, suffering, and all of the evil of the world, into thanksgiving, and thus into a blessing . . . . In the end, we want to insert ourselves into this thanksgiving of the Lord, and so truly receive the newness of life and to assist in the “transubstantiation” of the world: that it may be a world not of death, but of life, a world in which love has conquered death.145

It is impressive that every priest, a simple man, receives from the Church the truly divine “power” to make happen, by repeating the words of the Liturgy, that unheard-of event: the renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary and the transformation of the bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ.

But there is more. Inserted into Christ, through baptism, every Christian becomes “priest” and is able to offer, in union with the ministerial priest, the sacrifice with which Jesus offered himself on the Cross and gives himself up in the Mass for the glory of God and for the salvation of humanity. This is the immense thing that every Christian can do, so that each person—even though simple and humble—becomes the true protagonist of the history of the world, more than any head of State.

In fact, everything begins with the young and humble Mary of Nazareth, who, by her “yes” given in her unknown village of Galilee, changed human history more than all of the Emperors. This is why at the apparitions at Fatima the Blessed Mother chose to take as her interlocutors three Christian children from a remote village in Portugal. The Queen of Prophets enters into the history of the 20th century asking for the help of three children — nothing less — in order to save humanity.

This is how she makes herself known; this is the power of those who have no power on earth. The Blessed Mother asks these three little children, insignificant for the world, if they want to “offer” their prayers and their sufferings “in order to obtain the conversion of sinners,” that is, to save the world. “Yes, we want that!” responded Lucia with abandon. Thus, the small and simple become one with Christ and obtain eternal happiness and glory (“she made us see ourselves in God . . .”). Thus, the little and simple save the world, unbeknownst to the newspapers, the intellectuals, and the chanceries. The Blessed Mother in fact asks of them the daily recitation of the Rosary “to obtain peace for the world,” the end of the First World War.146

Mary’s words highlight the immense power of every Christian.

The other interlocutor of the Blessed Mother, at Fatima, is the pope. Fatima brings to light the strong link between Mary, Mother of the Church, and Peter, Vicar of Christ on earth. The Madonna entrusted to the three children a heartfelt message intended especially for the pope. It is the second part of the “Secret,” a prophecy that was pronounced, we remember, in July 1917, while the Great War was still going on, three months before the Bolshevik Revolution exploded in Russia, and twenty-two years before the outbreak of the Second World War:

You have seen Hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I have come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If My requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

The affair of the delayed “Consecration of Russia” is a complex question that has spanned many pontificates.147 But what is being emphasized here is the immense power of intercession that has been given to the pope. The Blessed Mother has confirmed this in person by coming from Heaven to ask the Supreme Pontiff to use the power given to him by her Son. When Jesus gave “the keys” of the Kingdom of Heaven to Peter, he said to him: “Whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven, and whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” (Mt 16:19). Peter personifies the Church, Saint Augustine tells us:148 these words reveal what a stupefying power God has given to the Church, which embodies herself particularly in the person of Peter, and in light of which power one may think of the mission that Benedict XVI is performing today.

It was Benedict XVI himself, after all, who explained the sort of “power” the pope has and what its source is. He did so in his memorable homily at the inauguration of his pontificate, explaining the symbol of the “pallium” worn by the Supreme Pontiff:

The lamb’s wool is meant to represent the lost, sick, or weak sheep which the shepherd places on his shoulders and carries to the waters of life. . . . The human race—every one of us—is the sheep lost in the desert which no longer knows the way. The Son of God will not let this happen; he cannot abandon humanity in so wretched a condition. . . . He is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. What the Pallium indicates first and foremost is that we are all carried by Christ. But at the same time, it invites us to carry one another. Hence the Pallium becomes a symbol of the shepherd’s mission . . . . When the shepherd of all humanity, the living God, himself became a lamb, he stood on the side of the lambs, with those who are downtrodden and killed. This is how he reveals himself to be the true shepherd: “I am the Good Shepherd . . . I lay down my life for the sheep,” Jesus says of himself (Jn 10:14ff.). It is not power, but love that redeems us! . . . God, who became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the Crucified One, not by those who crucified him. The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by the impatience of man. One of the basic characteristics of a shepherd must be to love the people entrusted to him, even as he loves Christ whom he serves. “Feed my sheep,” says Christ to Peter, and now, at this moment, he says it to me as well. Feeding means loving, and loving also means being ready to suffer. Loving means giving the sheep what is truly good, the nourishment of God’s truth, of God’s word, the nourishment of his presence, which he gives us in the Blessed Sacrament.149

The truth is enclosed in these words of the pope: “It is not power that redeems us, but love.” The work, the mission that Benedict is fulfilling today is unique, even if it is also misunderstood and undervalued: it is a mission of love. The mysterious force of love is what saves, not power. He, Benedict XVI, is the great sentinel of God of our time. It is he who has raised a great wall of defense for all of us in the time of the mysterium iniquitatis.

THE PROPHECY OF FATIMA ABOUT THIS OUR TIME is eloquent and calls for reflection. But perhaps there is more about that message that has remained in shadow and is truly frightening. There is a “detail” that emerges — after many years — from the ponderous volumes that gather all of the documents of the era from the various interrogators to whom the three shepherd children were subjected. We are talking about huge books that are not available to the general public, a mine of information that is still perhaps partly unexplored.

It is known that, shortly after the apparitions, Jacinta and Francisco died of the Spanish fever that raged all through Europe. It was Lucia — who became a Carmelite nun — who made known the message of the Blessed Mother until her death in 2005.

What we know about Fatima comes more or less from what Lucia has passed on to us, as well as what we know about Jacinta and Francisco. We have learned, for example, that Jacinta was particularly linked to the figure of a pope, evidently a future pope with respect to the years of her own life.

In the third memoir written by Lucia, dated August 31, 1941, we find the report of a vision of the little Jacinta (now canonized by the Church) that makes us think of Benedict XVI.

One day we went to pass the hours of siesta at my parents’ well. Jacinta sat down on the edge of the well and called to me.

“Didn’t you see the Holy Father?”

“No!”

“I don’t know how it happened! I saw the Holy Father in a very large house, kneeling in front of a table, holding his face in his hands, in tears. Outside of the house there were many people, some were throwing stones, others were swearing and using much bad language. The poor Holy Father! We must pray much for Him!”. . .

On another occasion we went to the cave of Cabeço. When we got there, we prostrated ourselves on the ground to say the prayers of the Angel. After a little while, Jacinta got up and called me. “Don’t you see many streets, many footpaths and fields full of people who are weeping from hunger and who have nothing to eat? And the Holy Father in a church in prayer before the Immaculate Heart of Mary? And many people in prayer with Him?”150

But in the documentation on the apparitions of Fatima there is also contained a phrase of the Blessed Mother that Jacinta related to those who interrogated her, a very strong phrase not found in the published texts of Sister Lucia, and which I have never read in any of the books on Fatima. A brief but terrible phrase, spoken by the Blessed Virgin during the apparition of October 13, 2017, the one in which the “Miracle of the Sun,” a frightening spinning of the sun in the sky, occurred in front of 70,000 people, including various journalists.

It came to my attention when a friend of mine from Padua, a pilgrim to Fatima, pointed it out to me, recommending to me a course on the messages of Fatima held in 2017 at the shrine in Portugal. Its title: Curso sobre a Mensagem de Fatima “O triunfo do amor nos dramas da Historia.”151 The Diocese of Leiria -Fatima also held this same course — as may be read on its website — “under the direction of Sister Angela Coelho, religious of the Alliance of Holy Mary and postulator of the cause of canonization of Francisco and Jacinta Marto.” This is a course “directed to devotees and pilgrims of Fatima, to those who are in charge of pastoral work in various fields, to the ecclesial movements, to Christians interested in a better understanding of the spirituality of Fatima.”152

The name of Sister Angela Coelho, a specialist on this material, is also found under the title of the course in the printed text at the shrine. The text is an instrument of the catechesis that the shrine of Fatima offers—over the course of the century since the apparitions—to many people who “have not yet had the opportunity to encounter” in a complete and ordered way “the message that, in the Cova da Iria, God gave to the people of our time, through the Blessed Mother. . . . In this sense, the shrine presents a Course on the Message of Fatima that presents the fundamental elements of the apparitions at the Cova da Iria.”

In the final section, containing the historical documentation, all of the apparitions are recounted, and in the chapter on the apparition of October 13, 1917, on page 40, the text reads:

And taking on a sadder appearance, [the Blessed Mother said]: “May they not offend any more Our Lord who is so greatly offended! If the people will amend, the war will end, but if they do not amend, the world will end.”153

I had never read this expression, which is so disturbing, in the official texts found in the bookstore. In fact, in the Memorie di suor Lucia, volume I (given the imprimatur by the bishop of Fatima on 28 March 2007), published by the Segretariado dos pastorinhos, the apparition of 13 October 1917 is recounted twice, but this phrase is not there.154 It is the same in the other books and interviews or in the letters of Sister Lucia. Who, therefore, reported those words of the Blessed Mother? And when? Where is the source? Are they reliable words?

In the footnote there is, among other things, a reference to “the interrogation of Dr. Formigão, in Documentação Crítica de Fátima, I, p. 142.” In other words, precisely those volumes of which I have spoken, which gather together all the interrogations of the seers and the other documents relative to the apparitions. And so I asked a friend, Bernardo Motta, an enthusiast of the story of Fatima, who was able to directly verify those sources in loco. From a non-exhaustive examination of volumes I and III of the series Documentação Crítica de Fátima, the volumes that cover the year 1917, Motta discovered that these words are true: in the interrogation of 19 October 1917, done by Padre Manuel Nunes Formigão at the Marto home, these words (which are not referred to by Lucia) are found in the text and are spoken by Jacinta, in her eighth answer.155 On the same day, Padre José Ferreira de Lacerda also interrogated the children. And the account is a document in which, in answer to the twenty-second question (“O que disse N. Senhora?”), Jacinta responds again with this notion: “If the people do not amend, the world will end.” Lucia responds to the same question without using those words.

Among the documents gathered in this volume, at the end there is a letter of Padre Manuel Pereira da Silva, who was present at the apparition of 13 October 1917, at the Cova da Iria, and who refers to his friend Padre Antonio Pereira de Almeida, who both saw and heard the children speak about the “end of the world” if people “do not do penance and change their lives.”156

A more extensive investigation of these sources may find further confirmation. But already these are sufficient. After all, the fact that this phrase was reported in a course on the apparitions given by Sister Angela Coelho, postulator of the cause of canonization of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, guarantees its authenticity and reliability.

It is not clear why the little Jacinta refers to having heard these words and Lucia does not. Nevertheless, it is true that there are still many unpublished pages of testimony of Lucia and they could contain these words and many others. After all, at different times in the course of the years following the apparitions, Sister Lucia presented something similar to the content of the phrase that Jacinta attributed to the Blessed Mother. For example, in the heated conversation she had on December 26, 1957, with Padre Agostino Fuentes, who was at that time the postulator of the cause of beatification of Francisco and Jacinta,157 we find many unsettling expressions. For example: “The punishment of Heaven is imminent,” and “many times the Most Holy Virgin has said, to my cousins Francisco and Jacinta and to me, that many nations will disappear from the face of the earth.” Or this: “Father, the Most Holy Virgin did not say to me explicitly that we are coming to the end of the world, but there are three reasons I am led to believe it.” And again: “Father, my mission is not that of telling the world about the material chastisement that certainly awaits it, if it does not convert in time to prayer and penance. No! My mission is to recall to each one of us the danger of losing our immortal souls, if we obstinately persist in sin.”158

What therefore should we think about the phrase of the Blessed Mother to which Jacinta refers? We might hope that there was some misunderstanding on the part of Jacinta, since Lucia does not refer to these words in the published texts. But, on the other hand, the things that Lucia says do not hold out the prospect of a much better future.

The phrase referred to by Jacinta makes an impression, because in 1917 three shepherd children from a remote Portuguese village would not have been able to imagine that a few years later atomic weapons capable of writing the words “The End” on the world and the history of humanity would be invented and created. The shepherd children could not have known that. But She who spoke to them and pronounced those words knew.

That it would unfortunately become realistic in this era of history to speak of “the end of the world” or at least consider this apocalyptic tragedy as a concrete possibility is confirmed by reason itself as well as by the newspapers. So much so that already a great pope like Paul VI, the pope who brought the Second Vatican Council to completion, spoke seriously with his friend Jean Guitton in the 1970s:

There is a great disturbance at this moment in the world of the Church, and what is in question is the Faith. It happens now that I repeat to myself the obscure phrase of Jesus in the Gospel of Saint Luke: “When the Son of Man returns, will he still find faith on the earth?”. . . At times I reread the Gospel about the end times, and I note that at this moment some signs of this end are emerging. Are we near to the end? This we will never know. It is necessary to hold ourselves always ready, but everything may still last much longer.159

To return to the “prophecy” relayed by Jacinta, we must consider that we are dealing with private revelations and that this is a conditional prophecy, that is, it indicates what may happen if humanity does not repent and does not change its ways. It would be difficult to affirm that such repentance has happened. It seems rather that the exact opposite has happened: mankind has taken the opposite route.

However, at Fatima there was great insistence on Russia, on the consecration and conversion of Russia. Sister Lucia said, in the dialogue of 1957, that “Russia will be the instrument chosen by God to punish the entire world, if we do not first obtain the conversion of that disgraced nation.” And in this case we ought to recognize that something grandiose has truly happened: not only the (unbloody) collapse of communism, of the regime of ideological atheism that tried to eliminate God and faith from the world, but even a change so radical that today Russia is one of the great nations where the Christian religion is more important in social life and is not opposed and fought against as in Western Europe.

Here, then, is the greatness of the design of Benedict XVI: in an insane historical moment, in which the West, ever more de-Christianized, has absurdly rejected and assaulted Russia (this Russia finally free and Christian) and has sought to marginalize her, returning her to Asiatic isolation or to the embrace of communist China, the dialogue that the pope had undertaken with the Russian Orthodox Church aimed at realizing the dream of John Paul II: a Europe of peoples united by their Christian roots from the Atlantic to the Urals.

What was planted by Benedict XVI, and now watered by his powerful prayer, is an evangelical seed that will truly be able to sprout something wonderful — not only for Christianity, but for all of Europe and for the entire world, in order to avert the insane ending of history.

6
“Everything is possible”

In the silence of the “dark night,” we are still able to listen to the Word. To believe is nothing other than, in the darkness of the world, to touch the hand of God, and so, in silence, to listen to the Word, to see Love.160

— Benedict XVI,

Spiritual Exercises with the Curia, 2013

THERE IS AN ANCIENT AND CELEBRATED DOCUMENT, full of mystery, which is called Prophetia Sancti Malachiae Archiepiscopi, de Summis Pontificibus, known more simply as the Prophecy of Malachy. It consists of a list of 111 popes, each one with a motto in Latin that is difficult to understand.

The mysterious prophecy, attributed to St. Malachy of Armagh (1095–1148), a friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, was published in 1595 by the Benedictine monk Arnold de Wyon, as part of a five-volume apocalyptic history of the Church, the Lignum Vitae, which sees the Benedictine order as the center of Church history. This text, which had been circulating among churchmen before its publication by Wyon, proposes a list of popes beginning with Celestine II (who became pope in 1143) and finally ends with the last one who—at first glance—seems to correspond with the end of the world.

The question is quite interesting for us because the list of future popes concludes precisely in our own time: the last pope, Gloria olivae, coincides with Benedict XVI. After the motto for the final pope, one reads this disturbing conclusion: “During the last persecution of the Holy Roman Church, Peter the Roman will preside, who will shepherd the flock amid many tribulations. When these have passed, the city of the seven hills will be destroyed, and the tremendous Judge will judge his people. The end.”

Not exactly a calming message. According to the interpreters, however, these words do not signify that the prophecy of Malachy announces that the end of the world will happen in our time. But it seems to foresee—after Gloria olivae (Benedict XVI) — a sort of “end” of the Church, or rather, a crisis that has never been seen before, an apocalyptic darkening of the Church. Does the end of Rome perhaps symbolize the end of the papacy or one of its most serious crises?

According to Alfredo Barbagallo, it would be “totally erroneous” to read it as a prophecy of “the end of the world”; rather it concerns the “end of the papacy.”161 One may also infer this from the fact that the successor of the last pope in the list is not called “pope,” as are his predecessors, but is addressed with the strange formula Petrus Romanus. However, in another manuscript kept by the Olivetan Benedictines of Rimini, which may be older, he is called Petrus Secundus.162 Rather than alluding to a pope with this name, since there is no pope with this name and it is highly improbable that any pope would dare to choose it, this expression perhaps signifies a sort of “second pope,” who works simultaneously with his predecessor. Or perhaps a “vice pope,” one who acts as pope (perhaps “a bishop dressed in white”?).

Saverio Gaeta also notes a coincidence: “It is of singular note that on the day on which Papa Bergoglio was elected, March 13, the Roman Martyrology celebrates Blessed Peter II (who died on this day in 1208), abbot of Holy Trinity monastery in Cava dei Tirreni [Campania].”163 It is only a chance occurrence, but, as Cardinal Giacomo Biffi says, sometimes chance is the garment that Providence wears when it travels anonymously.

Thus, the last pope would be Gloria olivae, but there is also the mention of this enigmatic figure “Peter the Roman (or the Second).” Why is there this anomaly? Is the figure not an authentic pope? Does it refer to Jorge Mario Bergoglio who ends up being the successor of Benedict XVI?

The title Petrus Romanus would fit well on Bergoglio, who has repeatedly defined himself as “the bishop of Rome,” beginning on the evening of his election; but it would also fit well because of the fact that Benedict XVI still remains as pope, although only in a contemplative way, and Bergoglio seems to be a second pope in an active way. Moreover, the time of Peter the Roman—in the Prophecy of Malachy—is marked by “many tribulations” of the flock, that is, by the suffering that Christians live through under his pontificate, as is in fact happening.

At any rate, the series of popes is interrupted at number 111, with Benedict XVI. What happens afterwards? This is the problem. There is a mysterious break.

People have always made the mistake of believing that the so-called Prophecy of Malachy consists of a series of riddles, relative to each pope, as if it was something similar to the mysteries of Nostradamus. In so doing, people have indulged in the temptation to decipher the prophecy, and each title has been debated in order to show its pertinence or its absurdity. But, in so doing, they end up getting off track and the true sense of this mysterious text is not understood.

There is also discussion about the origin and author of the Prophecy, and here it is necessary to say that we do not have documents that enable us to attribute the work directly to the paternity of Saint Malachy. But, on the other hand, it is illogical to conclude that therefore it is a text without any prophetic value. There is no logical link between those two things. Nothing prevents the reference to Malachy being simply symbolic or due to other reasons, and it may have been made for spiritual reasons.

What is certain is that it is a text that fascinates. So has Vittorio Messori declared many times, and also Sergio Quinzio in 1995 in Mysterium Iniquitatis.164 It is fascinating above all today, because the series of popes finishes in our time and — coincidentally — it is also exactly in our time that there is occurring an unprecedented situation that sees the coexistence of two popes, a situation similar to the conclusion of the prophecy. We are thus led to think that the true “prophecy” is right there.

But let us try to understand it. Are there any indications that would lead us to identify the two persons in the prophecy with Benedict XVI and Jorge Mario Bergoglio? Here it is interesting to follow the study of Alfredo Barbagallo entitled La profezia di san Malachia di Armagh sui papi [ The prophecy of St. Malachy of Armagh on the Popes], which is a part of one of the most complete works of research on Christian relics, entitled I tesori di san Lorenzo [The treasures of San Lorenzo].165

Barbagallo recalls first of all that the identification of Benedict XVI with the last motto Gloria olivae sees the olive as a symbol of the Olivetan Benedictines (which links together the name Benedict with the olive), founded by St. Bernardo Tolomei, who was canonized on April 26, 2009, by Benedict XVI himself. In my opinion this canonization of the founder of the Olivetans may be the explanation of the motto Gloria olivae in reference to Benedict XVI.

But there is also the reference to the pope who denounced the “useless slaughter” of the First World War and who thus—as a pope of peace — recalls the symbol of the olive: it was Benedict XVI, who, in his first audience as pope, explained his choice of name by recalling Pope Benedict XV as well as Saint Benedict.

And finally, it was a Benedictine, Arnold de Wyon, who kept the ancient text of Saint Malachy and published it at Venice in 1595, in his apocalyptic history of the Church. Wyon did not limit himself to this written publication, explains Barbagallo: “He personally commissioned pictorial and artistic representations of the ecclesiastical subject of ‘The Benedictine Glory.’”166 One of these is found in the Benedictine convent of Scolca, near Rimini. Then he had the same configuration created by Antonio Vassilacchi (in 1592) in the Benedictine basilica of San Pietro, in Perugia. It is one of the largest paintings that exists, and the totality of the figures represented there (popes, cardinals, bishops, and founders of orders, all surrounding Saint Benedict), when viewed all together, reveals a monstrous face: the face of the devil or the Antichrist. Barbagallo writes, “It is evident here that the intention of Wyon was to send a particular message to safeguard the Church of the future in the battle against Evil.”167

Barbagallo also explains that Wyon continued his work by having the same depiction painted in Piedmont “at the Benedictine abbey San Pietro in Bergoglio, not far from Boscomarengo, which today no longer exists (the work is now preserved in the town of Alessandria in Piedmont).” One notices the reference to St. Peter in both of these churches, but what is most striking here above all is the name “Bergoglio.” We do not know why Wyon chose this particular Benedictine foundation, but it is surprising to see that it bears the name that today belongs to the successor of Benedict XVI, which in the series of popes in the prophecy would be Petrus Romanus. Is this a direct indication by Wyon? Moreover, in all of these works, Wyon intended to leave apocalyptic references to books of the Old and New Testament.

But the coincidences are not yet finished. Barbagallo takes up an old book written by a French Jesuit priest, Monsignor René Thibaut, which was published in 1951 (with the ecclesiastical imprimatur): La mystérieuse prophétie des Papes. Fr. Thibaut, through a series of complicated calculations, affirmed that the chronological ending of the prophecy of Saint Malachy, as a pontifical cycle, would occur in the year 2012. Barbagallo notes that, as a matter of fact—according to gradually revealed information — the date on which Benedict XVI communicated to his Secretary of State his decision to resign was April 30, 2012, even though the public announcement would not be made until February 11, 2013.

On what basis did Father Thibaut arrive at precisely 2012 as the final year of the prophetic cycle of popes? It is assumed that the central axis of the Prophecy of Saint Malachy was the pontificate of Saint Pius V (1504–1572), who was fundamental in the formation of Wyon. And here we find another series of coincidences: Saint Pius V was originally from the village of Boscomarengo, where the abbey of San Pietro in Bergoglio stood (and from where also the Bergoglio family had its origin). Pius V died on May 1, 1572, exactly 440 years before the decision of Benedict XVI to resign (April 30, 2012). But exactly 440 years before the death of Saint Pius V, in 1132, Saint Malachy of Armagh (after whom the prophecy of the popes is named) was ordained as Archbishop and Primate of Ireland. Two phases of 440 years each and, behold, the cycle is complete.

Recall that Saint Pius V is the pope of the victory of Lepanto. It was he who put into practice all that had been decided by the Council of Trent (in response to the Lutheran heresy), and it was he who promulgated the Tridentine Mass that Benedict XVI restored to its citizenship in the Church (it is one of the distinguishing marks of his pontificate). Bergoglio is instead the protagonist of a sort of “rehabilitation” of Luther, of an attack on the traditional norms of access to the Eucharist (even to the point of intercommunion with Protestants), and he seems to be aiming at an ecumenical reform of the Mass, which, if actuated on the terms that are feared, would provoke an extremely strong trauma in the Church, perhaps even to the point of schism.

Barbagallo has the merit of having intuited that the true prophetic significance of the list of popes would consist in its having predicted at the time of the Gloria olivae a great fracture, a grave crisis, or a quasi- ending of the papacy and of the Church. The final reference of the prophecy to the persecution of Christians and to a sort of disappearance of the papacy leads Barbagallo also to give a symbolic -theological reading of the final pope’s motto Gloria olivae. In fact, in his historical excursus, the author rediscovers Saint Malachy and the pope of his time in relation to the most important relics of the Passion of Christ and to the place where it began: the Garden of Olives in Jerusalem. According to a mystical and Scriptural tradition (as seen in the Catechism of the Catholic Church nn. 675–677),168 the Church in history must relive the same Passion of the Lord, which began with the night of the Garden of Olives (Gloria olivae) and would be repeated precisely at the time of the pope called Gloria olivae (Benedict XVI) . In that night of Jesus, which included the betrayal of Judas, the flight of the apostles, and the denial of Peter, everything seemed lost and finished. Also for Catholics, today seems to be a sorrowful night in which everything appears lost. But after the darkness of Gethsemane there comes the luminous morning of Easter.

IN JUNE 2016, PAUL BADDE, HISTORIAN AND ROME correspondent for the American Catholic television network EWTN, did a unique interview with Monsignor Georg Gänswein. At a certain point, the interviewer made reference to the Prophecy of Malachy, according to which Benedict XVI would be the final pope. The response of Monsignor Gänswein was surprising: “Indeed, when looking at the prophecy, and considering how there was always a sound reference to popes mentioned in history—that gives me the shivers.” It’s true, he explained, that Catholics are not obliged to believe in this text; however, “speaking from historical experience, we must say: ‘Yes, it is a warning bell.’”169

These are unexpected words that make us reflect. But even more surprising was the response of Benedict XVI when the same question was placed to him by Peter Seewald in his Last Testament, the book that, as we have seen, was published when Ratzinger was already pope emeritus. Seewald asked Benedict:

You are acquainted with the Prophecy of Malachy, who in the Middle Ages foresaw, with a list of future popes, an end of time, or at least an end of the Church. According to this list, the papacy would end with your pontificate. Is that an issue for you, whether it can actually be that at least you are the last of a series of popes, as we have known the office so far?170

The response of Ratzinger leaves us astonished: “Everything is possible.” And then he immediately added: “This prophecy probably arose in the circles around Philip Neri.” First of all, he calls it “prophecy,” then — surprisingly — he links it to a great saint and mystic of the Church, gifted with many charisms: Saint Philip Neri. And then he gives the distinct impression of actually deepening the argument and of holding it possible that he is — in some way — “the last pope.” He concludes with a lightening joke: “But you don’t have to conclude that it really ceases then. Rather that his list was not long enough.” Nevertheless, his first answer can only leave us astounded.

Thus, could Benedict XVI be the last pope, or at least — according to the version of the interviewer— the last one to exercise the papacy as we have known it for two thousand years? Another passage of the book leads in this direction. “Do you see yourself as the last pope of an old era,” Seewald asks, “or the first pope of a new era?” And the response: “I would say both.” Then Benedict XVI adds: “I don’t belong to the old world any more, but the new world isn’t really here yet.” And here the interviewer poses the question about Papa Bergoglio, that is, whether his election is “the exterior sign of an epochal shift” and whether “with him there definitively begins a new era.” At this point Benedict XVI surprises us once again: “One always recognizes the divisions of eras only later. . . . Only in retrospect does one see how the movements [of history] proceeded. For this reason, I would not now hazard a similar affirmation.” Then he speaks of the de-Christianization of Europe and concludes: “Seismic upheavals are now underway. But we do not yet know at which precise point we can say that there begins one, and there another.”171

In one of my articles discussing the discoveries of Barbagallo on the Prophecy of Malachy, I recalled these affirmations of Benedict XVI. In reply, Barbagallo wrote to me:

I did not know about this interview, and I am naturally struck by the brief section in which the interviewer asks the pope about the prophecy of Malachy. The response of the pope — only apparently surprising—connects the origin of the prophecy to the “circle around Philip Neri.” At first glance, I understood how these words must have appeared to most commentators, with respect to the actual matter of the prophetic text, as to its difficult and obscure historic interpretation, to the point of not being understood. In contrast, my own first impression of the pope’s formulation is that it appears to be something of precision and absolute historical exactness.

Barbagallo highlights something important:

The famous prophecy of the Roman pontiffs dates by tradition to the beginning of the 12th century, to the figure of the Irish bishop Malachy of Armagh, teacher of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. The material citation of the prophecy and its text dates, however, to the late 16th century, through the figure of the learned Benedictine monk Arnold de Wyon, who reports on it in his Lignum Vitae. Through the same communication of Wyon, the preceding pontifical mottos were interpreted philologically by a learned and noted Dominican, Msgr. Alphonsus Chacòn (“Ciacconius”). And Chacòn was an effective and prestigious part of the celebrated cultural cenacle that formed around Philip Neri, under the name of the Oratory, together with other great intellectuals of that epoch (Bosius and others).

Among other things, Barbagallo notes that

the Lignum Vitae, which reports the prophecy, was printed in Venice by Wyon in 1595. But this was the year of the passing of Philip Neri. The conclusion of all this seems obvious. The historical quotation on the part of Papa Ratzinger on the text of the prophecy . . . appears to be totally precise. . . . In the quoted interview, Benedict XVI thus appears to go back correctly to an original story, and he substantially transmits the sensation of an authoritative knowledge of his own historical reality.

Moreover, Barbagallo emphasizes that the students of Saint Philip Neri have found evidence of a link between him and Saint Malachy, inasmuch as the programmatic motto adopted by Saint Philip links back to the Irish bishop and to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: “Spernere mundum, spernere nullum, spernere seipsum, spernere se sperni ” [To despise the world, to despise no one, to despise oneself, to despise being despised].

From this whole matter we deduce the certainty that our time is truly a dramatic one, one of grand epochal changes and — as has been said — apocalyptic. It is therefore only natural to scrutinize the prophecies, but above all it is necessary to meditate on those things that are part of public revelation, which are referred to in paragraphs 675–677 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

It is indeed in Sacred Scripture that the lights are found to illuminate the way even in the darkest epochs. Today, for example, the words of the prophet Daniel are being re -read with much attention (Dan 8:10–14), which serve as a valid warning for Christians of every time:

It grew great, even to the host of heaven; and some of the host of the stars it cast down to the ground, and trampled upon them. It magnified itself, even up to the Prince of the host; and the continual burnt offering was taken away from him, and the place of his sanctuary was overthrown. And the host was given over to it together with the continual burnt offering through transgression; and truth was cast down to the ground, and the horn acted and prospered. Then I heard a holy one speaking; and another holy one said to the one that spoke, “For how long is the vision concerning the continual burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and host to be trampled under foot?” And he said to him, “For two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings; then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state.”

CONCLUSION

ONCE THE MINISTRY OF BENEDICT XVI AND his actual mission for the Church and for humanity has been (re)discovered, Catholics can realize that they are not alone. They have a father and a path to follow. Thus, to those who are confused and disheartened in this time of trial and darkness, there opens up the path of the true “Benedict Option.”

First: Remain firm in the Catholic faith, drawing on the teaching of Benedict XVI and the perennial Magisterium of the Church, holding in particular the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a point of reference, one of the great legacies left by John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger.

Second: United to Pope Benedict, pray untiringly (also offering one’s own sufferings) for the Church and especially for the Chair of Peter.

Third: Give testimony to the Truth, with meekness and charity, but without accepting any lie, always ready to suffer for the Truth, according to the words of Jesus — not being conformed to today’s dominant ideologies nor to their judgment on the events of the present and of history.

Fourth: Practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

Fifth: Live the true life of the Church, the life of the sacraments, in sought-out fraternity with those who share the Catholic faith, illuminated by Sacred Scripture.

And it is Sacred Scripture that opens the way to hope:

The wilderness and the parched land will exult,

the steppe will rejoice and bloom.

Like the crocus it shall bloom abundantly,

and rejoice with joyful song.

They will see the glory of the Lord,

the splendor of our God.

Strengthen hands that are feeble,

make firm knees that are weak,

Say to the fearful of heart: Be strong, do not fear!

Here is your God, he comes with vindication;

With divine recompense he comes to save you.

Then the eyes of the blind shall see,

and the ears of the deaf be opened;

Then the lame shall leap like a stag,

and the mute tongue sing for joy.

For waters will burst forth in the wilderness,

and streams in the steppe.

A highway will be there, called the holy way;

No one unclean may pass over it,

but it will be for his people;

No traveler, not even fools, shall go astray on it.

No lion shall be there, nor any beast of prey approach, nor be found.

But there the redeemed shall walk,

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,

and enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy;

They meet with joy and gladness,

sorrow and mourning flee away.

Isaiah 35

1 Serafino M. Lanzetta, “Alla radice della presente crisi della Chiesa,” in Sandro Magister, “La malattia della Chiesa si chiama post-modernismo. La diagnosi di un teologo,” L’Espresso, 5 October 2018, https://bit.ly/2QDvcUB. R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., “The Pope at a Loss for Words,” hT e Washington Times, 16 October 2018, https://bit.ly/2PGV2Xu.

2 Walter Brandmüller, “È necessaria una legge che stabilisca lo statuto dell’ex-papa,” in Sandro Magister, “Brandmüller: ‘La rinuncia del papa è possibile, ma è da sperare che non succeda mai più,’” L’Espresso, 18 July 2016, https://bit.ly/2E4BM4P.

3 Fabrizio Grasso, La rinuncia. Dio è stato sconfitto? (Viagrande: Algra Editore, 2017), 33.

4 John Henry Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908), 279.

5 Ibid.

6 Cf. Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity (New York: Harper Collins, 2011).

7 Time has demonstrated that John Paul II was right. That war opened a disastrous period for the world and a tragic one for the Christians of the Middle East. See Andrea Tornielli, “La guerra in Iraq e la profezia di san Giovanni Paolo II,” Vatican Insider, 8 July 2016, https://bit.ly/2C0ijQp.

8 Discourse addressed by Pope Benedict XVI to the US Ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon, 29 February 2008, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/document/discourse-addressed-by-pope-ben-edict-xvi-to-the-us-ambassador-to-the-holy-see-mary-ann-glendon-170.

9 Roberto Regoli, Oltre la crisi della Chiesa. Il pontificato di Benedetto XVI (Torino: Lindau, 2016), 354–55.

10 Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Lo storico discorsetto di Castelgandolfo,” in Scritti corsari (Milano: Garzanti, 1995), 77–81. Originally published in Corriere della Sera, 22 September 1974, with the title: “I dilemmi di un Papa, oggi.”

11 Missa Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice, Homily of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Dean of the College of Cardinals, 18 April 2005, http://www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/homily-pro-eligendo-pontifice_20050418_en.html.

12 Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI, 24 April 2005, https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedictxvi/en/homilies/2005/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20050424_inizio-pontificato.html.

13 Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, 30 November 2007, §19, http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html.

14 The casus belli which led to the imposition of sanctions against Russia was related to the controversy over the Crimea and Ukraine. Apart from the fact that it is difficult to extrapolate what really happened in Ukraine from all of the foreign interference there, what is remarkable is that the United States opposed the self- determination of the Republic of Crimea, which voted by referendum to leave Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. And yet the West has always supported the principle of self-determination for all of the former Soviet republics (Ukraine included), as well as for the regions of the former Yugoslavia. The United States itself was born from its own Declaration of Independence from Great Britain.

15 3   https://www.thenation.com/article/who-putin-is-not/.

16 “The leaders of the United States succeeded in completely forgetting about the promise formulated in 1990 not to expand NATO towards the East in exchange for the authorization given to the reunified Germany to become part of the Atlantic Alliance.” Diana Johnstone, Hillary Clinton. Regina del caos (Frankfurt-on-Main: Zambon, 2016), 178.

17 Ibid., 178–79.

18 It is significant that a high-profile personality like former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who was opposed to the sanctions imposed on Russia (“Occorre togliere immediatamente le sanzioni alla Russia,” Il Fatto quotidiano, 23 January 2017), also showed in a 2016 interview that he is very critical of the strong ultra-American policy of the European Union: “We have not understood history, which tells us that in a globalized world Europe needs Russia and Russia needs Europe.” Prodi then condemned the decision to “send NATO soldiers to do military exercises on the Russian border and to open NATO membership to nations like Ukraine and Georgia,” because “these are historically buffer zones that always serve as a safeguard against trouble and incidents.” Finally, he warned against the escalation of the war: “We are witnessing a sort of green light being given to the military, which is dangerous because this can trigger accidents and military movements which can become difficult to contain.” From “Romano Prodi, l’allarme: ‘Rischio di derive militari,’” LiberoQuotidiano.it, 26 October 2016, https://bit.ly/2Pj10xO.

19 Naturally, the Russia of Putin has its points worthy of critique, just like every other nation, some more, some less. But the demonization of Russia is incomprehensible, considering the communist past from which it has emerged and also considering the various regimes with which the West is allied or to which it has no objection and applies no sanctions (two examples are Saudi Arabia and China). Such demonization can thus only be explained by the refusal of Putin to bow his head to the domination of the United States. It is significant, for example, that one of the most repeated indictments against Putin is his alleged “homophobic” legislation. In this regard, look at what Italian politician Giulietto Chiesa, who surely has secular ideas and cannot be accused of having religious sympathies, has written: “The accusation of homophobia is employed far and wide against the Russian president,” but “homosexuality, which up until yesterday in many parts of the West was considered unseemly when it was not illegal, is now not only condoned by a solemn American decision (that now the whole world must accept as its own) but has also become a normal condition, equipped with every civil right (which is unobjectionable) and is almost raised to being an example for everyone (which, by contrast, is largely objectionable). Today homosexuality is regularly at the top of the list on the agenda of the West. In the rest of the world it is not like this, but the West believes it has the right to impose this agenda. The fact that in Russia homosexual propaganda has been forbidden has become simply one more argument to add to the list of the senseless uproar of accusations and falsifications whose general target is always Putin.” Giulietto Chiesa, Putinfobia (Milan: Piemme, 2016), 129–30.

20 Benedict XVI (with Peter Seewald), Last Testament In His Own Words (London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), 209. Every quotation from this book has been checked against the German original, and sometimes modified in light of it: Letzte Gespräche: Mit Peter Seewald (Munich: Droemer, 2016).

21 Ibid., 210–11.

22 Germano Dottori, “Perché ci serve il Vaticano,” Limes, n. 4/2017, p. 154. In this context Dottori also recalls certain episodes: “At the height of the crisis, Italy saw the doors of access to international financial markets progressively close, while the Institute for Religious Works [IOR or the Vatican Bank] was temporarily cut out of the Swift circuit [the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication].”

23 We will address these emails later.

24 Federico Cenci, “L’America di Trump: mano tesa verso Russia e Chiesa cattolica,” Zenit, 13 November 2016, https://bit.ly/2OflqeA.

25 Last Testament, 24.

26 Gianandrea Gaiani, “La Nato si prepara a una guerra. Con la Russia,” La nuova Bussola Quotidiana, 20 February 2018, https://bit.ly/2E4tsSR.

27 Matteo Matzuzzi, “Gli ortodossi russi celebrano Benedetto XVI: ‘Fermo oppositore di ogni compromesso sulla fede,’” Il Foglio, 17 October 2017, https://bit.ly/2E71QMY.

28 Preface of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI to the Russian edition of Volume XI of his Opera Omnia, https://bit.ly/2PrDZJa.

29 Johnstone, Hillary Clinton, 146.

30 Alfredo Macchi, Rivoluzioni S.p.a. (Lecco: Alpine Studio, 2012), 262–63.

31 Ibid., 263.

32 “Obama: Assad se ne deve andare,” La Stampa, 19 August 2011, https://bit.ly/2PkDMHq.

33 Macchi, Rivoluzioni S.p.a., 246.

34 Jivko Panev, “Les États-Unis soutiennent officiellement l’autocéph-alie de l’Église en Ukraine,” Orthodoxie.com, 14 September 2018, https://bit.ly/2OJwwYz.

35 “Metropolitan Hilarion Accuses U. S. of Deliberately Destroying Russian Orthodox Church,” Interfax-Religion, 17 September 2018, https://bit.ly/2zZXF1n.

36 Jivko Panev, “L’ancien vice-président américain Joe Biden a ren-contré le ‘patriarche’ Philarète et a exprimé son soutien à la création d’une Église orthodoxe autocéphale en Ukraine,” Orthodoxie.com, 21 September 2018, https://bit.ly/2CxsZXU.

37 “In the last thirty years a widespread network has grown in Washington of government and non-government organizations, companies, and institutions, which constitutes a real parallel diplomacy, largely private, used by the State Department and the CIA to carry out their own strategic plans without officially existing. It is a galaxy of organizations which continued its activity even after the fall of the Berlin Wall and permits Washington to influence the politics of certain countries and to overthrow hostile leaders without having recourse to the strong ways of the Pentagon” (Macchi, Rivoluzioni S.p.a., 59).

38 The Podesta Emails, WikiLeaks, https://bit.ly/2ehf0Kk.

39 https://bit.ly/2Qxq3gC.

40 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/6293.

41 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/16557.

42 Lorenzo Bertocchi writes: “Other exchanges of emails dating from 2011 have also emerged from WikiLeaks in this context. There is an exchange entitled ‘Conservative Catholicism’ between John Halpin, senior expert of the Center for American Progress, and the influential Jennifer Palmieri, who is today communications director for Hillary Clinton and at that time was the president of the same Center for American Progress. The exchange of emails reached its apex when Halpin emphasized that the presence of many Catholics among conservatives was a sign of their misunderstanding of the political tradition of Catholicism, or rather ‘an astounding embarrassment of the Faith.’” Lorenzo Bertocchi, “Lobby Usa per rivoluzionare la Chiesa,” La nuova Bussola Quotidiana, 15 October 2016, https://bit.ly/2E9CxKh.

43 Alexandre Meyer, “Rivelazioni di WikiLeaks: lo staff della Clinton ha fomentato ‘infiltrazioni’ nella Chiesa cattolica,” Aleteia.org, 17 October 2016, https://bit.ly/2E9ApC5.

44 John-Henry Westen, “Leaked E-Mails Show George Soros Paid $650K to Influence Bishops during Pope’s US Visit,” LifeSite News, 23 August 2016, https://bit.ly/2bgwO6B.

45 Andrea Mainardi, “Wikileaks, ecco chi spinge negli Usa per una Chiesa americana progressista,” Formiche, 21 October 2016, https://bit.ly/2OfqnUu.

46 Riccardo Cascioli, “Se la Chiesa cade nelle mani di Soros,” La nuova Bussola Quotidiana, 28 August 2016, https://bit.ly/2QCELmB.

47 The full text of the letter is found at https://bit.ly/2Ks9Lm8.

48 Cliff Kincaid, The Soros Files, 5 March 2013, https://bit.ly/2QCvgnA.

49 In the Mass preceding the conclave of 2005, then-Cardinal Ratzinger, in fact, had described the situation of the Catholic world in these words: “How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves—flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4:14) comes true. Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism.” The entire text may be read at http://www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/homily-pro-eligendo-pontifice_20050418_en.html.

50 “Four hundred priests were reduced to the lay state by Benedict XVI between 2011 and 2012 because they were accused of pedophilia.” Francesco Antonio Grana, “Ratzinger e lo scandalo pedofilia, in due anni 400 sacerdoti ‘spretati’ da Benedetto,” Il Fatto Quotidiano, 18 January 2014, https://bit.ly/2J3QPL5.

51 Antonio Socci, Non è Francesco (Milan: Mondadori, 2014), 54–63.

52 Nicolas Diat, L’homme qui ne voulait pas être pape (Paris: Albin Michel, 2014); Andrea Tornielli and Paolo Rodari, Attacco a Ratzinger (Milan: Piemme, 2010).

53 From the Catholic point of view the Church should not be two hundred years behind but rather two thousand: that is, it ought to turn its heart continually, not to the future, but to the event of Jesus Christ, because He is the eschaton, the fulfilment, the one who gives meaning to time, and with Him every “novelty” has already happened. On this point see Sandro Magister, “Dopo Martini è lite sul suo testamento spirituale,” L’Espresso, 6 September 2012, https://bit.ly/2yI9s2A.

54 26 September 2015, http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/st.-gallen-group-not-a-lobby-group-say-authors.

55 Jonathan V. Last, “The Catholic Church Is Breaking Apart. Here’s Why,” The Weekly Standard, 14 September 2018, https://tws.io/2xdf84p.

56 Catherine Pepinster, The Keys and the Kingdom. The British and the Papacy from John Paul II to Francis (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), 69–72.

57 The entire text of Universi Dominici Gregis may be read at http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_jp-ii_apc_22021996_universi-dominici-gregis.html.

58 A “glebe” in both Italian and English is a feudal term referring to a small parcel of land. The play on words implies an enslavement and subjection of peoples. — Trans.

59 Cited in Alberto Bagnai, L’Italia può farcela. Equità, flessibilità, democrazia. Strategie per vivere nella globalizzazione (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2014), Kindle position 5754–55.

60 Jean Jaures, address given in the Chambers of Deputies, 17 February 1894, known by the title Pour un socialisme douanier.

61 Cf. Antonio Socci, Traditi, sottomessi, invasi (Milan: Rizzoli, 2018).

62 Johnstone, Hillary Clinton, 58.

63 Mattia Ferraresi, “Contro il fascismo di sinistra,” Il Foglio, 6 February 2015, https://bit.ly/2nr4K6E.

64 Interview with La Verità, 24 September 2018, p. 2. In order to understand the reason for such a critical judgment, see Socci, Non è Francesco, and idem, La profezia finale (Milan: Rizzoli, 2016).

65 It is inevitable, reading these words prefaced by the pope to Cardinal Robert Sarah’s book, that one thinks of two persons at the summit of the Church: one who “is” while remaining in silence and one who “is not” even though he speaks ...

66 Jason Horowitz, “In Private Letters, Benedict Rebukes Critics of Pope Francis,” The New York Times, 20 September 2018, https://nyti.ms/2QObTIY.

67 Grasso, La rinuncia, 24.

68 https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2013/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20130227.html

69 Saverio Gaeta, La profezia dei due papi (Milan: Piemme, 2018), 28–29.

70 Grasso, La rinuncia, 30–31.

71 Ibid., 24–25.

72 Gianfranco Ghirlanda, “Cessazione dall’ufficio di Romano Pontefice,” La Civiltà Cattolica 3905 (2013): 448, https://bit.ly/2NFVx2w.

73 “Ratzinger: No a un nuovo emblema araldico da Papa emerito,” La Stampa, 30 January 2014, https://bit.ly/2NBXgpe.

74 Avvenire, 28 February 2014.

75 The entire text of the Declaratio may be found at http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2013/february/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20130211_declaratio.html.

76 It would subsequently appear as the Encyclical Lumen Fidei, dated June 29, 2013 and published under the name of Pope Francis, but with Pope Benedict’s primary authorship acknowledged. — Ed.

77 Its full title is Impenetrabilis Pontificiae Dignitatis Clypeus. In quo vera doctrina de Potestate Summi Pontificis Romani indubitati supra omnia Concilia etiam generalia & legitime congregata; et de eiusdem infallibilitate in rebus ad fidem, moresque spectantibus . . . demonstratur. . . . Item de Potestate Concilii Universalis legitimi supra Papam dubium, seu Antipapam, et in casu Schismatis iuxta veram Concilii Constantiensis explicationem.

78 Canon 44 §1 of Section III of the Code of Canon Law of the Eastern Churches reads: “Supremam et plenam in Ecclesia potestatem Romanus Pontifex obtinet legitima electione ab ipso acceptata una cum ordinatione episcopali; quare eandem potestatem obtinet a momento acceptationis electus ad summum pontificatum, qui episcopali charactere insignitus est; si vero charactere episcopali electus caret, statim ordinetur Episcopus.”

79 This is expressed well by the 1917 Code of Canon Law in canon 219, where it affirms that “The Roman Pontiff, legitimately elected, obtains by divine law, immediately following his election, the full power of supreme jurisdiction” (emphasis added). And Fr. Ghirlanda writes: “The Introduction of UDG [Universi Dominici Gregis] declares, with reference to canon 332, §1, that it is a doctrine of the Faith (doctrina est fidei)—thus of divine institution — that the power of the Supreme Pontiff derives from Christ Himself. Above all, this means that supreme personal power is conferred upon the Roman Pontiff not by any human authority, whether civil or ecclesiastical, such as the College of Cardinals or an Ecumenical Council or a Synod of Bishops, but rather, in such manner that he is subject only to Christ, of whom he is the universal and visible Vicar here on earth.” Ghirlanda, “Cessazione dall’ufficio di Romano Pontefice.”

80 That is, as long as the one in office continues to will that which makes the holding of the office possible: in this case, the pope must will to be the pope and must will to hold and teach the Catholic Faith. This will may normally be assumed unless external signs indicate without doubt that the subject no longer has it. — Ed.

81 Andrea Tornielli, “Motu proprio per l’anticipo del Conclave,” Vatican Insider, 25 February 2013, https://bit.ly/2PtvjSs.

82 Mimmo Muolo, “Conclave al via il 12 marzo. Montato il camino sulla Sistina,” Avvenire, 8 March 2013, https://bit.ly/2QJM4cm.

83 Cited in Valerio Gigliotti, La tiara deposta (Florence: Olschki, 2014), 399.

84 Ibid., 401.

85 Luigi Chiappetta, Prontuario di Diritto canonico e concordatario (Rome: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1994), Presentation of Cardinal Camillo Ruini, p. 1073, “Romano Pontefice,” num. 3, In caso di rinunzia.

86 Carlo Fantappiè, “Papato, sede vacante e ‘papa emerito.’ Equivoci da evitare,” in Sandro Magister, “Avviso di pericolo: una Chiesa con due Papi,” L’Espresso, 9 March 2013, https://bit.ly/2OnGbEP.

87 In this mysterious story, which — for the moment — still needs to be clarified, Papa Ratzinger has sometimes appealed to surreal explanations, which perhaps ought to make us sense that he could not speak about it, that he could not say how things really were. In fact, in an interview with Elio Guerriero (“Ratzinger, la confessione: ‘Troppo stanco, così ho lasciato il ministero petrino,’” Repubblica.it, 24 August 2016, https://bit.ly/2En6nuW), he declared that World Youth Day 2013 had been set for Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and since he— after his trip to Mexico—felt that he could no longer travel by plane, and the tradition of the World Youth Days required the presence of the pope, he — in order to not renounce World Youth Day — decided to renounce the papacy (“This also was a circumstance which made the resignation a duty for me”). Now, such a bizarre explanation would sound like a gratuitous excuse for anyone who gave it, but all the more so in a man of such profound faith as Benedict XVI, who well knows and has many times explained the grave divine mandate which is at the foundation of a papacy (it does not appear that the Gospel would permit the Petrine ministry to take second place to being present at World Youth Day). Given a choice between renouncing World Youth Day and renouncing the papacy, it is hardly possible that a pope would choose to renounce the papacy. Moreover, in this interview Ratzinger offers the classic excusatio non petita when he says: “The physical presence of the pope was indispensable. One could not imagine having only a television link or some other technological connection.” And why not? Moreover, anyone who saw that World Youth Day knows that (just like at other WYDs) for the vast majority of young people in attendance, the pope was only visible on huge video screens — exactly the same as if he had been “linked up” from Rome.

88 Hans Küng, Una battaglia lunga una vita (Milan: Rizzoli, 2014), 1093–94.

89 See https://www.lastampa.it/2018/05/16/vaticaninsider/paul-vis-secret-letter-how-he-hypothesized-his-resignation-utTk11lbQPGo-cPBPom5HSJ/pagina.html.

90 Stefano Violi, “La rinuncia di Benedetto XVI. Tra storia, diritto e coscienza,” Rivista Teologica di Lugano (2/2013): 203–14.

91 https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2013/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20130227.html.

92 Guido Ferro Canale, “La rinuncia di Benedetto XVI e l’ombra di Carl Schmitt,” in the column “Settimo cielo” of Sandro Magister, L’Espresso, 4 July 2016, https://bit.ly/2Om6nQc.

93 Carl Schmitt, “Teologia politica,” in Le categorie del politico (Bologna: il Mulino, 1972), 34 and 38–39.

94 Among the most noteworthy but precious exceptions is Vittorio Messori. The celebrated Catholic writer published an article in Corriere della Sera on May 28, 2014, entitled “Ratzinger did not retire to a private life. The reason why we truly have two popes.” Messori made reference to the study of Stefano Violi, and among other things he wrote: “It is foreseeable that the conclusions of Professor Violi will lead to debate among his colleagues,” but on this he was mistaken: he had not considered the leaden jacket of conformist silence which weighs down the media and ecclesiastical classes regarding anything which could “disturb” the present power in the Vatican. Moreover, on September 9, 2015, Messori was received in a private audience by the pope emeritus (requested by the latter). To dispel the rumors that were spreading, he made a small report in La nuova Bussola Quotidiana, a very interesting article (in which Messori makes no mention of Papa Bergoglio), from which I will here recall a passage that is very significant because they are not casual words but written for those who have ears to hear: “When I bowed to kiss his hand (as is demanded by a tradition which I respect, above all because there are those who seek to degrade the role and figure of the Supreme Pontiff), His Holiness placed his hand on my head to give me a blessing, which I received as a great gift.” Another significant phrase of Messori, for those who know how to read between the lines: “We then discussed other topics, but these require of me a dutiful discretion.” Vittorio Messori, “Una mattina nell’eremo del Papa emerito,” La nuova Bussola Quotidiana, 16 September 2015, https://bit.ly/2OiobM1.

95 An English translation of this address is found at https://aleteia.org/2016/05/30/complete-english-text-archbishop-georg-Gänsweins-expanded-petrine-office-speech/.

96 Lippis et tonsoribus —a phrase from Horace’s Satires (I,7), literally “by the bleary-eyed and barbers,” which may perhaps best be rendered in English as “by every Tom, Dick, and Harry.” — Trans.

97 Ferro Canale, “La rinuncia di Benedetto XVI e l’ombra di Carl Schmitt.”

98 See the Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis, n. 87, and the Code of Canon Law, can. 332.

99 The ultra-Bergoglian website Vatican Insider immediately undertook damage control, interviewing the canonist Monsignor Giuseppe Sciacca (Andrea Tornielli, “Sciacca: ‘Non può esistere un papato condiviso,’” Vatican Insider, 16 August 2016, https://bit.ly/2RGvN9b).

Tornielli, author of the interview, commenced his implicit argument with Gänswein by recalling that Francis himself had already responded: “There is only one pope. Benedict XVI is the pope emeritus.” The preceding June [2016], during the flight back from Armenia, Francis had thus responded clearly and precisely to a question on the theory regarding the possibility of a “shared” papal ministry. But if the pope had already responded, what necessity was there to make a canonist speak on the topic two months later? The reason is simple — because the question was not at all settled. Indeed, it is still more unsettled than ever.

The interview with Sciacca is remarkable because it is entirely dedicated to refuting Archbishop Gänswein, but without ever directly quoting him, as is typical practice for old-school clericalism. According to Sciacca, not only do Gänswein’s statements make no sense from a canonical point of view, but also the very title of “pope emeritus” decided on by Pope Benedict XVI makes no sense, because “it seems to confer a sort of papal power distinct from any further sort of exercise [of that power].” Sciacca maintains that “the distinction found in Lumen Gentium,” which “distinguishes between munus and the exercise of potestas,” regards only the “episcopal office” and is the basis for the possibility of “bishops emeriti,” but this “cannot be applied to the office of the Pontiff.” However, in saying this, Sciacca ends up contradicting Bergoglio himself, who —in order to normalize the presence of Benedict XVI—has many times affirmed that the institution of “popes emeriti” is analogous to that of bishops emeriti: “Seventy years ago, bishops emeriti did not exist. What will happen in the future with popes emeriti ? We ought to look at Benedict XVI as an institution. He has opened a door, the door of popes emeriti” (Andrea Tornielli, “Se Francesco smentisce di voler rinunciare al pontificato,” Vatican Insider, 30 May 2016, https://bit.ly/2yvLSWr).

Bergoglio even gave a very positive evaluation: “With courage!—and with prayer, and also with learning, with theology [Benedict XVI] decided to open this door. And I believe that this is good for the Church” (Conferenza Stampa di papa Francesco nel volo di ritorno dalla visita in Armenia, 27 June 2016, https://bit.ly/2IRrlAm).

The dilemma which the Bergoglians find themselves in is without a solution: if, in fact, they recognize the title of “pope emeritus,” they must recognize that Benedict XVI is still pope; but if they deny this title and contest the declared intention of the “resignation” (which was not a resignation of the munus, but only of the active ministry), it means that then they would have to hold that the resignation is invalid, because doubtful and partial. Either way, the boulder of Benedict XVI remains sitting in the middle of the highway of the Bergoglian revolution.

100 That is, had he listened to Müller. —Trans.

101 “Benedetto e Francesco, entrambi al servizio della Chiesa. Intervista al cardinale Müller,” blog of Aldo Maria Valli, 6 November 2016, https://bit.ly/2eG6nqH.

102 The book was the fruit of a series of conversations which took place “shortly before and after Benedict’s resignation” (xx); thus the observations made by the pope emeritus about Papa Bergoglio must be placed, chronologically, at the beginning of the Bergoglian pontificate and must be therefore understood in reference to a period in which his “revolutionary” intent had still not been manifested so clearly.

103 Benedict XVI, Last Testament, 36.

104 Ibid., 25.

105 See, for example, the text of Fr. Francisco Leytam which we have already cited, Impenetrabilis Pontificiae Dignitatis Clypeus, in particular section IX, §§71ff. (https://bit.ly/2Pw13X2). This work is illuminating because it addresses a series of other problems relative to the papacy. For example, it considers the case in which the elected pope “ne observarentur Sacramenta, & ut aliquid fieret contra definitiones de fide tam in Conciliis, quam extra, ab aliis Pontificibus antecessoribus factas” [does not respect the Sacraments or does other things contrary to the definitions of faith made either by councils or by other popes preceding him] (§77). In this case, in fact, “potest deponi ab Ecclesia” [he may be deposed by the Church]. The reason would be “quia ille praeceptiones iniquae contra id, quod de fide est in Ecclesia definitum, sunt signa externa significativa interni affectus haeretici: haeresis enim non solum significatur verbis, sed factis: undè si Papa ab his non vult emendari, potest declarari, ut haereticus, & censebitur immediate a Christo deponi: & tunc jam ut non Papa, sed ut persona privata potest ab Ecclesia puniri, ut suo loco dictum est” [because those sinful precepts against that which is defined by faith in the Church are external signs which signify the internal disposition of a heretic: for heresy is not only signified in words but also in actions: whence if the pope does not wish to amend, he may be declared to be a heretic, in which case he will be censured immediately by Christ and deposed by Him: and then he would not be pope but a private person able to be punished by the Church] (§78). But the next affirmation by Leytam is also interesting (referring to a doubtful pope suspected of being a heretic): “Et in hoc sensu, in quo de Canonica Pontificis electione nulla prudens ratio appareret, tunc Pontifex nullus esset, quia non entis, & non apparentis idem est iudicium” [And in the sense that there would appear to be no prudent determination of the canonical election of a pope, then the pope would be null, because the judgment whether something does not exist or does not appear to exist is the same] (Introductio, Discept. VIII, §12).

106 “La lettera di Benedetto XVI,” blog of Andrea Tornielli, 27 February 2014, https://bit.ly/2IQ7QZf.

107 Nikolaus Harbusch, “Papst Benedikt XVI. In grosser Sorge um seine Kirche,” Bild, 20 September 2018, https://bit.ly/2xyS5Rd.

108 The prelate proposes a series of juridical acts to define in detail all that concerns the resignation of a pope. Among other things, he writes: “And thus it is indispensable to establish the modality for certifying the effective freedom of the act. It is not enough to refer to the act and say that it is valid until proven otherwise, because in dealing with the pope his resignation is followed immediately by the election of his successor. If, in this case, after the election is done, there are proofs presented that freedom was lacking in the resignation, the consequences would be disastrous. The freedom of the act of resignation must be confirmed, for example, by the declaration of the heads of the three orders of the College of Cardinals. Indeed, in such a context the question also must be raised of the involvement of the College of Cardinals in the papal renunciation. Canonists have already discussed this problem in the case of Saint Celestine V.” Walter Brandmüller, “È necessaria una legge che stabilisca lo statuto dell’ex-papa,” in Magister, “Brandmüller: ‘La rinuncia del papa.’”

109 The English translation of these letters may be found at https://bit.ly/2C8JdW6.

110 In the first letter, he fears “difficult consequences, above all in the context of the present situation.” In the second he affirms that “the sorrow in some” over his resignation “has turned into anger, which no longer regards only the resignation, but which grows ever greater against me personally and against all of my pontificate. In this way a pontificate becomes devalued and merged into the sadness over the present situation of the Church.”

111 See Ceremonial of Bishops, nn. 1955–1963. This text is found in Italian at https://bit.ly/2yyU7Bj.

112 Maria Antonietta Calabro, “Io come Pio XII perseguitato dai nazisti,” Huffington Post (Italian edition), 20 September 2018, https://bit.ly/2ISrxPZ.

113 Ibid.

114 The entire text may be read at https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2005/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20050424_inizio-pontificato.html.

115 “Ratzinger: ‘La rinuncia? Me l’ha detto Dio.’ La ricostruzione di un sito cattolico,” Repubblica.it, 20 August 2013, https://bit.ly/2Cb4C0W.

116 See Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990), 246–64.

117 Ibid., 259.

118 Archbishop Gänswein said in the conference at the Gregorian University: “Benedict XVI, from the moment of his resignation, has thought of himself as an old monk, so that, after February 28, 2013, he feels it is his duty to dedicate himself above all to prayer for Mother Church, for his successor Francis, and for the Petrine ministry instituted by Christ himself.”

119 Sandro Magister, “Il cardinale Sarah ha dalla sua parte il papa. Ma si chiama Benedetto,” L’Espresso, 19 May 2017, https://bit.ly/2ITsY0o.

120 The “progressive” theologian Andrea Grillo, for example, had already — before Benedict’s preface was written — thundered against the pope emeritus: “A resignation from the Petrine ministry, as opposed to death, ought to have the character of ‘death’ much more strongly accented. The silence of prayer ought to be total and ought also to involve his collaborators. The exterior signs, such as the white robe, ought to be set aside. The distancing from authority ought to be full and radical, not only on the formal level, but I would say also on the ‘geographical’ level.” Andrea Grillo, “Papa Benedetto: luci e ombre di una successione senza morte,” Adista.it, 29 April 2017, https://bit.ly/2RJBSld. After the publication of Benedict XVI’s preface to Sarah’s book, Grillo increased the dosage, calling the preface “a true and proper incident. It’s as if Ratzinger had, spontaneously, renounced his resignation and wanted to influence the decisions of his successor.” Grillo declared the “inadequacy and incompetence” of Cardinal Sarah on the liturgy, affirming that “the choice of Sarah was made by Pope Francis after listening to the opinion of his predecessor. So the praise which the predecessor offers to his successor [for this decision] sounds rather strange,” and then he faults Benedict XVI for writing that “the liturgy is in good hands” with Sarah, and affirms that “the move appears all the more serious if, in the meantime, an inevitable and healthy change of the position of Prefect is being prepared.” Andrea Grillo, “Una postfazione senza discrezione. Ratzinger si ostina a raccomandare Sarah,” Munera, 19 May 2017, https://bit.ly/2Op8FhK. Essentially, Benedict XVI stopped them from making this change, and they were very irritated.

121 Here is the story as told by Sandro Magister: “Due papi, due Chiese. Le ‘fake news’ di Francesco e il gran rifiuto di Benedetto,” L’Espresso, 1 April 2018, https://bit.ly/2EdC61e.

122 “Il messaggio di Benedetto XVI ai funerali del card. Meisner,” Fondazione Vaticana Joseph Ratzinger-Benedetto XVI, 11 July 2017, https://bit.ly/2PtL9wp.

123 Two champions of false progressivism, Massimo Faggioli and Alberto Melloni, commented on Twitter. The first wrote sarcastically: “It would be nice to know who wrote the message of Joseph Ratzinger for the funeral of Cardinal Meisner” (https://bit.ly/2IRdomi). The second commented just as ironically: “There exists a proto-Ratzinger and a deutero-Ratzinger, and now also a pseudo-Ratzinger who alludes negatively to the reigning Pontiff” (https://bit.ly/2NCjwzB). But whoever has even a minimum of knowledge of the thought and language of Joseph Ratzinger recognizes his personal style in this message, his recollections, and his convictions. In fact, his secretary Monsignor Gänswein replied: “The pope emeritus wrote the message himself, from the first syllable to the last, without anyone’s help. They want to exploit him. But all of this accomplishes nothing” (Il Giornale, 18 July 2017).

124 The entire text of the homily may be read at https://bit.ly/2pQALnc.

125 https://bit.ly/2ygTLjo.

126 Marco Tosatti, “La testimonianza di mons. Viganò. I documenti dell’ex nunzio,” Stilum Curiae, 5 September 2018, https://bit.ly/2Cds6CT.

127 “Chiesa e abusi, Dreher: Il Papa risponda, ma anche i laici,” La nuova Bussola Quotidiana, 19 September 2018, https://bit.ly/2C7Vdr7.

128 http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2010/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20100511_portogallo-interview.html.

129 http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/2005/via_crucis/en/station_09.html.

130 http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/cardinal-ei-jk-pope-needed-to-give-clarity-to-german-bishops-on-intercommuni.

131 https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2008/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080912_parigi-cultura.html.

132 The text of Archbishop Gänswein’s intervention may be found at https://bit.ly/2OigKEN.

133 Valli then wrote: “How much of Ratzinger is in the words of Gänswein? Probably quite a bit, considering the closeness and affinity between the pope emeritus and his secretary. On the other hand, the Archbishop would not express himself in a certain way if he did not feel that he had the endorsement of Benedict” (https://bit.ly/2IPDYfi).

134 The entire text may be seen at http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2005/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20050427.html.

135 St. Benedict, Holy Rule, 72.11; cf. 4.21.

136 The synthesis of the Symposium may be found at https://bit.ly/2RQl5gw.

137 Anna Guaita, “Nel 1962 gli Usa stavano per scatenare una Guerra nucleare per errore. Ma un capitano evitò la catastrofe,” Il Messaggero, 20 October 2015, https://bit.ly/2Or852H.

138 This is obviously my own geopolitical judgment. I am not referring to the “Doomsday Clock” which is updated by the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,” https://bit.ly/2IkvRqR.

139 Marco Tosatti, “Il patriarca ortodosso vede i segni dell’Apocalisse,” La nuova Bussola Quotidiana, 23 November 2017, https://bit.ly/2OnEWpj.

140 Ibid.

141 “Papa Francesco a Fatima: ‘Come un vescovo vestito di bianco,’” Corriere.it, 12 May 2017, https://bit.ly/2NGJBxq; Lucio Di Marzio, “Il Papa a Fatima: ‘Vengo come vescovo vestito di bianco,’” ilGiornale.it, 12 May 2017, https://bit.ly/2OnB3R8.

142 Renzo Allegri, Il Papa di Fatima (Milan: Mondadori, 2006), 21.

143 This was prophesied in the Old Testament: “For from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered to my name and a pure offering, because great is my name among the Gentiles, says the Lord of hosts” (Mal 1:11).

144 Cardinale Giuseppe Siri, Il nostro itinerario con Gesù Cristo (a series of spiritual exercises).

145 “Discorso di Benedetto XVI nel 65esimo anniversario della sua ordinazione sacerdotale,” 28 June 2016, https://bit.ly/2CL4TZC.

146 Antonio Socci, Il quarto segreto di Fatima (Milan: Rizzoli, 2006), 183.

147 Ibid.

148 “Peter alone deserved to represent the entire Church. And because of that role which he alone had, he merited to hear these words: To you I shall give the keys of the kingdom of heaven. For it was not one man who received the keys, but the entire Church considered as one. Now insofar as he represented the unity and universality of the Church, Peter’s pre-eminence is clear from the words: To you I give, for what was given was given to all. For the fact that it was the Church that received the keys of the Kingdom of God is clear from what the Lord says elsewhere to all the apostles: Receive the Holy Spirit, adding immediately, whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven, and whose sins you retain, they are retained. This is in reference to the keys, of which it was said: Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven” (Saint Augustine, Discourse 295, 2.2).

149 Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI, 24 April 2005.

150 Memorie di suor Lucia, vol. I (Fatima: Secretariado dos pastorinhos, 2000), 6th edition, 111–12.

151 A Course on the Message of Fatima “The Triumph of Love in the Dramas of History,” https://bit.ly/2RQ3R2T.

152 From the website of the Diocese of Leiria-Fatima, https://bit.ly/2OoZ2zn.

153 In Portuguese: “E tomando um aspecto mais triste: ‘Não ofendam mais a Nosso Senhor que já está muito ofendido! Se o povo se emendar, acaba a guerra e, se não se emendar, acaba o mundo.’”

154 On page 96 of the Italian version, one reads: “We are therefore, Most Reverend Excellency, at the 13th of October. On this day, Most Reverend Excellency, you already know everything that happened. In this apparition, the words which most impressed themselves in my heart were those of the request of our Most Holy Mother in Heaven: ‘May they not offend God any more, Our Lord, who is already so offended.’” Then on page 177, Lucia retells this again, referring to the dialogues. She says: “I would have many things to ask you: if certain sick people will be cured and if certain sinners will convert, etc.” The response of the Blessed Mother as recounted by the sister is this:

“Some, yes; others, no. They must amend themselves and ask pardon for their sins.” And taking on a sadder look: “They must not offend God Our Lord any more, who is already very offended.” And opening her hands, she made them reflect in the sun, and as she was lifted up, the reflection of her same Light continued to project itself into the Sun.

The Portuguese edition of the Memorie is identical to the Italian and these phrases are found on pages 97 and 181.

155 “O que disse a Senhora desta ultima vez?” [Jacinta] disse: “Venho aqui para te dizer que não offendam mais a Nosso Senhor, que estava muito offendido, que se o povo se emendasse acabava a guerra, se não [se emendasse] acabava o mundo. A Lucia ouviu melhor do que eu o que a Senhora disse.” Source: DCF, vol. I, 2nd ed., Doc. 16, p. 159 (in this case the child Jacinta adds, however, that Lucia better understood the words of the Madonna).

156 “[Jacinta] Que se o povo [não] quizesse emendar acabava o mundo; se não se quizesse emendar acabava a guerra.” Source: DCF, vol. I, 2nd ed., Doc. 47, p. 316.

157 The text was published with ecclesiastical approval in the United States in 1958 in Fatima Findings, the review of Fr. Ryan, and on June 22, 1959, in the Portuguese daily A Voz.

158 This passage from Sister Lucia is also significant: “That which offends the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Heart of Jesus above all is the fall of the souls of religious and priests. The devil knows that for every religious or priest who renounces his lofty vocation, many souls are dragged into hell.”

159 In Jean Guitton, Paolo VI segreto (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni San Paolo, 1985), 152–53.

160 Benedict XVI, on the occasion of the conclusion of the Spiritual Exercises of the Roman Curia, 23 February 2013, https://bit.ly/2IYyQWr.

161 Alfredo Maria Barbagallo, La profezia di Malachia di Armagh sui papi, https://bit.ly/2RNDQRI.

162 Barbagallo gives as his source La profezia dei sommi pontefici romani con illustrazioni e note (Ferrara, 1794), 30. It may be read online at: https://bit.ly/2J7qPyF.

163 Gaeta, La profezia dei due papi, 71.

164 Sergio Quinzio, Mysterium iniquitatis (Milan: Adelphi, 1995).

165 Alfredo Maria Barbagallo, I tesori di san Lorenzo (Tavagnacco: Edizioni Segno, 2017). It is a volume of 682 pages, but an abridged and more accessible version has just been published.

166 Barbagallo, La profezia di Malachia.

167 Ibid.

168 675: “Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo- messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.”

676: “The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgement. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarinism, especially the ‘intrinsically perverse’ political form of a secular messianism.”

677: “The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgement after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.”

169 The translation of the entire interview may be seen at https://bit.ly/2EoIbYW. See also https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2016/06/25/aide-pope-benedicts-resignation-nature-spoken/.

170 Last Testament, 233.

171 Benedict XVI, Last Testament, 232–33.