Pope John Paul II

There had, however, been a straw in the wind. What Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger witnessed during the final years of Pope John Paul II's Papacy left a lasting ...

Why was there a shift from “Ratzinger the liberal” to “Ratzinger the conservative”, a change that occurred in his thought in the critical years since the end of Vatican II in 1965, and 1977 when Pope Paul VI made him archbishop of Munich. It was also in his capacity as head of the CDF that he played a role in the decision of John Paul II to strip Hans Kung, his old colleague from Tubingen, of his licence to teach Catholic theology. Survivors of Catholic clerical child abuse in Germany welcomed the report and said it marked “the collapse of a monument”. “He has hardly governed the Church,” wrote John Wilkins, former editor of, “preferring to write encyclical letters, books and speeches.” John Allen of the , compared Benedict to a headmaster writing great essays while around him the school building was on fire. One of the difficulties Benedict XVI had to contend with was a dysfunctional Roman Curia (the Church’s central administration). That danger was always real, but the clear lesson to be drawn was that if and when a future pope resigns, his place of residence in retirement should be far away from Rome. It must not be forgotten that he witnessed at first hand the distressing spectacle of the final years of his predecessor’s long pontificate when it was evident that John Paul II, stricken by Parkinson’s disease, was no longer in control. Since, Benedict XVI is the only other Pope to freely abdicate, though there were warnings that his continued presence in the Vatican would inevitably cast a shadow over the papacy of his successor. Knowing that he was a favourite to succeed the Polish pope, he warned the others that “I am not a man of governance”. In April 2019, in particular, he sent a long essay to a German magazine in which he took the opposite position of his successor on the issue of sexual abuse by clerics. The code itself, the updated version of which was promulgated by Pope John Paul II in January 1983, provides for a papal resignation. Back in October 1966, Pope Paul VI sparked a flurry of speculation when he paid a visit to the tomb of Pope Celestine V near Agnani in central Italy.