Pope Benedict Was a Powerful, Flawed Leader in Turbulent Times

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was regarded as one of the most brilliant theologians of the last century and one of the most powerful churchmen of the last 50 years. That unusual mixture of great erudition and enormous authority did not serve him well, however, and may have contributed to a personal hubris that clouds his legacy.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, ascending to the highest position in the Roman Catholic Church because he represented, for many Catholic cardinals as well as their followers, conservative values and stability during a time of rapid liberalization and change. But he came to oversee a church plagued by continuing sexual abuse revelations and cover-ups, as well as financial and other corrosive scandals.

Born in 1927 in a small town in Bavaria and raised during Germany’s Nazi regime, Joseph Ratzinger was ordained a priest after World War II. He became a theologian and expert at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), archbishop of Munich in 1977, and then head of the Roman Curia’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was regarded as one of the most brilliant theologians of the last century and one of the most powerful churchmen of the last 50 years. That unusual mixture of great erudition and enormous authority did not serve him well, however, and may have contributed to a personal hubris that clouds his legacy.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, ascending to the highest position in the Roman Catholic Church because he represented, for many Catholic cardinals as well as their followers, conservative values and stability during a time of rapid liberalization and change. But he came to oversee a church plagued by continuing sexual abuse revelations and cover-ups, as well as financial and other corrosive scandals.

Born in 1927 in a small town in Bavaria and raised during Germany’s Nazi regime, Joseph Ratzinger was ordained a priest after World War II. He became a theologian and expert at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), archbishop of Munich in 1977, and then head of the Roman Curia’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981.

In that latter role, Ratzinger became Pope John Paul II’s doctrinal czar, helping to lead a conservative backlash to the reforming impulses of the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, and against what he saw as Marxist-tinged social justice movements like liberation theology. In public life, he led campaigns against moral relativism and secularism, and inside the church he launched secret investigations of theologians who were seen to be straying from conservative doctrine or practice—efforts that earned him monikers such as the “Panzerkardinal” and “God’s Rottweiler.”

In reality, Ratzinger was much more of an inside player and scholarly intellectual than a Grand Inquisitor. He spent much of his 23 years in John Paul’s service writing books, giving lengthy interviews and lectures, and cultivating a global platform for his personal theology and vision for the church. He could wield power softly and slowly because he wielded so much of it for so long.

Ratzinger was at the pinnacle of church power for such a long time, in fact, that he was the only cardinal to vote in the two conclaves of 1978 and also the one in April 2005 that followed the death of John Paul, the first Polish pope; that was the conclave that elected Ratzinger as Benedict XVI, the first German pope in history.

It was an election that few expected and that Ratzinger expressly did not seek. He was 78—two decades older than John Paul had been when he was elected pope—and Ratzinger wanted to retire to Bavaria to write books, not run a global church of 1.2 billion Catholics. He told his fellow cardinals in the conclave that he was not an administrator, which is a central duty of a pope.

But Ratzinger was the cardinal whom the other 114 electors knew best; they had all dealt with him for years or even decades. And after the 26-year reign of John Paul, they did not want another marathon papacy.

At his election, there was a brief outcry over Ratzinger’s childhood registration in the Hitler Youth, but neither mainstream Jewish groups nor his usual critics ultimately held that against him. As a young teenager, Ratzinger had to enroll in the Hitler Youth, but he was physically slight and very studious and never attended meetings.

Near the end of the war, the 16-year-old Ratzinger was drafted into the German anti-aircraft corps. He deserted and was captured by the Allies and was held for a brief time in an American prison camp.

He almost immediately entered the seminary, and he was ordained in 1951. Initially, he was a reforming theologian, instrumental in pushing for major updates to church teaching and practice on religious freedom, liturgy, and engagement with the world. But toward the end of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, he was beginning to express reservations over the direction the church was taking, especially in seeming to “conform” to the prevailing culture rather than transforming the culture in Catholicism’s image.

Those reservations grew as changes in Catholic life and liturgy took sometimes radical and unexpected paths amid newfound freedoms. Thousands of priests and nuns left religious life, many anticipating that rules on celibacy were about to be abolished. Not only did liturgies change from Latin to the vernacular, but guitars and other modern elements were introduced, scandalizing Ratzinger’s old-fashioned sensibilities. Traditional customs such as fasting and eating fish on Fridays were dropped or made optional. Everything seemed to be up for grabs and likely to disappear.

The social upheavals that roiled Western society were equally unsettling to the tradition-minded Ratzinger. His conservative tilt after 1968 grew ever more pronounced—and increasingly welcome to those who wanted stability and continuity after the reign of John Paul.

Despite the hopes for him as pope, however, Benedict’s papacy did not unfold as planned. Never a crowd-pleaser, his quiet and formal public demeanor combined with his embrace of ornate, old-fashioned papal vestments—including bright red custom shoes and ermine-trimmed hats—quickly branded him as a supremely fussy figure rather than a pastor of the people.

Several more consequential problems soon developed. Returning to his old university in Regensburg in 2006, he delivered a lecture that unfavorably contrasted Islam with Christianity and inflamed Muslim sentiments around the world. He shocked the Jewish community by rehabilitating leaders of a schismatic right-wing group of Catholic traditionalists, one of whom was an outright Holocaust denier. Benedict later said he had no inkling of that record, an assertion many found implausible.

Benedict assiduously courted traditionalists of various types and issued a document allowing them to celebrate the old pre-Vatican II Latin Mass. The Second Vatican Council had opened the door to an overhaul of the Mass, not only by allowing the central Catholic rite to be celebrated in local languages but also by moving the altar closer to the congregation and turning the priest around so that he faced the flock instead of keeping his back to them.

Rather than appeasing the traditionalist wing, as Benedict intended, the old Latin rite became a rallying point for foes of Benedict’s eventual successor, Pope Francis, who finally had to restrict the practice. Benedict innovated when he felt it was necessary—but generally in the service of a more conservative church: He created, for instance, a new rite to attract conservative Anglicans disaffected with the progressive tilt of their tradition.

The papacy’s profile on the world stage also became diminished during this time. Benedict appointed as secretary of state his top aide at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone—a theologian with no diplomatic experience who said he preferred to think of himself as a secretary “of church” rather than a secretary of state. Benedict favored “less diplomacy and more Gospel,” as the Vatican-watcher Sandro Magister put it.

But the church itself wasn’t run any better than its foreign policy. In 2012, the “Vatileaks” scandal erupted when a series of internal documents was published detailing all manner of allegations of financial corruption, bribery, and scandalous behavior in the Roman Curia. Benedict’s personal valet, Paolo Gabriele, was eventually arrested and convicted of passing along many of the documents. Gabriele was apparently part of a clique of courtiers fighting others for influence, and using leaks to do so, which continued even after Gabriele was arrested. The pope was unable to stop the leaks and didn’t seem to try.

Benedict appeared overwhelmed and exhausted. On Feb. 11, 2013, during a routine ceremony in the apostolic palace, Benedict stunned Vatican officials—at least those who understood the Latin he spoke in—by announcing that he would resign at the end of the month, the first pontiff to renounce the Chair of St. Peter in 600 years and one of a handful of papal resignations in history.

At nearly 86, after an eight-year papacy, Benedict left the main stage. His departure paved the way for the election of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis, a pontiff who began undoing much of the conservative project that Benedict had dedicated his life to advancing.

Yet even in retirement, Benedict remained an imposing influence. He created the title of “pope emeritus” for himself, retained the distinctive white cassock and papal name, and retired to a monastery inside the Vatican walls.

All this continued to fuel speculation among his passionate fans that he remained the true pope. Benedict sought to quash such speculation. “It was a difficult decision [to resign],” he told an Italian newspaper in 2021. “But I made it in full awareness, and I think I did the right thing. Some of my somewhat ‘fanatical’ friends are still angry. They haven’t accepted my choice. … They don’t want to believe in a consciously made decision.”

But Benedict also continued to issue pronouncements and give interviews on various issues, keeping him in the news during a retirement that lasted longer than his pontificate.

The longest shadow cast was that of the clergy sexual abuse scandal. It was a crisis that had unfolded while Ratzinger was at the peak of influence in Rome, in the 1990s and early 2000s, but one he repeatedly minimized even as behind the scenes he became aware of the depth and breadth of the abuses.

When Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he took important steps in disciplining and laicizing sex abusers, and he personally met with abuse victims—a first. But he always blamed the secular world for the scandals, rather than pointing to the church’s clerical culture or the responsibility of bishops who did nothing.

That came back to haunt Benedict in early 2022. A report was issued on historical abuses in Munich, where he was archbishop from 1977 to 1982, showing that he himself had failed to take action against abusive priests in four instances. Rather than accept any personal responsibility, Benedict—as well as his personal aide and team of lawyers, who by that point were speaking for the frail former pontiff—issued a forceful defense and, under public pressure, a generalized apology for mistakes that were made.

The controversy became increasingly fraught. Benedict’s chief mouthpiece, longtime personal secretary Archbishop Georg Gänswein, accused the former pope’s critics of fomenting a movement “that really wants to destroy the person and the work” of Benedict. “It has never loved him as an individual, his theology, his pontificate,” Gänswein told an Italian newspaper in February 2022.

In truth, Benedict’s legacy had probably already been cast long before this point. Joseph Ratzinger was a polarizing figure almost from the beginning of his career, and he increasingly became a locus of polarization as he gained prominence and power. Those who loved Benedict XVI in life will revere him even more in death. Those who opposed his theological outlook or his record in governing the church—or both—will see his life as a cautionary tale for the next conclave of cardinals that gathers to elect a new pope.