Former Pope Benedict XVI dies at the age of 95 | Pope Benedict XVI

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The Vatican has announced that Pope Benedict XVI, who served as the Catholic Church’s leader from 2005 until his resignation in 2013, has died at the age of 95.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement: “It is with sorrow that I inform you that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died today at 9.34 in the Convent of the Mother Church in the Vatican. More information will be provided as soon as possible.”

His death comes after Pope Francis announced during his weekly audience on December 28 that Benedict was “very ill”.

Benedict’s death ends an unprecedented period in modern history in which two popes coexisted, a situation that caused tensions within rival camps in the Vatican. It paves the way for his successor, Pope Francis, to consider whether to follow Benedict by way of retirement at some point — an impossibility when the result would have been three popes.

Born Benedict Joseph Aloysius Ratzinger in Germany in 1927, he was a staunchly conservative pope whose tenure was overshadowed by sexual abuse scandals in the church. He retired, leaving a checkered post-papal that was sometimes divisive.

The results of a German investigation published in January 2022 stated that Benedict failed to take action against four priests accused of pedophilia while he was Archbishop of Munich.

The son of a policeman, he grew up in rural Bavaria and at the age of 14 joined the Hitler Youth, a requirement, and served in the German army in World War II. Nearing the end of the war, he deserted, and was briefly held as a prisoner of war by American forces.

He later became a major figure in the Vatican and, as Cardinal Ratzinger, acted as the right-hand man of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. He presided over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department formerly known as the Inquisition, for 24 years, a position that earned him the nickname “God’s Rottweiler”.

During his tenure, allegations of clerical sexual abuse and cover-ups began to surface. His critics said he failed to understand the seriousness of the crimes and the scale of the crisis, which reached its climax several years after he was elected pope in April 2005.

Along with the flood of allegations, lawsuits, and official reports of sexual abuse and priests’ complicity in its cover-up, the Vatican was also rocked by the theft of classified documents, many of which later surfaced in revelations of alleged corruption. In October 2012, the Pope’s personal butler, Paolo Gabriele, was found guilty by a Vatican court of stealing the papers. He said at the trial that he was working against “evil and corruption”.

The Divisive Papacy of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI – Video Obituary

Benedict was a theological conservative, taking uncompromising positions on homosexuality and contraception. He had been adamantly opposed to liberation theology, a radical movement that began in South America in the 1960s and advocated clerical social activism among the poor and marginalized.

His abrupt resignation, at the age of 85, in February 2013, the first pope to do so since the Middle Ages, left the church reeling. He said at the time that he did not have the strength to continue to lead the estimated 1.2 billion Catholics in the world. “I had to realize my inability to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me,” he said.

Taking the title of Pope Emeritus, he vowed to remain “hidden from the world”, devoting himself to private prayer. He retired to a convent in Vatican City, where he read, wrote letters and articles, entertained guests, and played the piano.

But the former pope remained a strong conservative influence and a focus of attention for opponents of Francis’ efforts to reform the church and reorient it to serve the poor. He has repeatedly made his views known through letters, articles, and interviews. In April 2019, two months after Francis held a groundbreaking Vatican conference on sexual abuse, Benedict published a 6,000-word message in which he said the abuse was a product of a culture of sexual freedom dating back to the 1960s.

In January 2020, Benedict publicly advocated clerical celibacy, as Francis was considering allowing married men to become priests in limited circumstances. In From the Bottom of Our Hearts, he wrote, “I Can’t Be Silent”: Priesthood, Celibacy, and the Crisis of the Catholic Church, arguing that priestly celibacy protects the Church’s sacrament.

In the resulting uproar, Benedict requested that his name be removed as co-author with Cardinal Robert Sarah, a major conservative tipped to succeed Francis.

The controversy, which erupted just before the popes, a film about the seemingly warm relationship between Benedict and Francis, has aired on Netflix, exposing the tensions between the rival Vatican camps.

Additional reporting by Angela Giuffrida in Rome

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