Late Pope Benedict XVI found ample reason to be disappointed with the actions of a pontiff who professed to admire him greatly but whose actions told a different story.
One year after Benedict XVI’s death, his biographer, Peter Seewald, has raised serious concerns about the way in which his successor, Pope Francis, is managing his legacy.
Read: Pope Francis Faces Growing Worldwide Pushback Against His ‘Same-Sex Blessing’ Doctrine
While it is true that Pope Francis has written ‘nice letters’ to his predecessor and also described him as a ‘great pope,’ in practice, he has ‘erased much of what was precious and dear to Ratzinger’, according to the biographer.
National Catholic Register reported:
“’Benedict trusted Francis. But he was bitterly disappointed several times’, Seewald said in an interview.
[…] ‘If you really speak of a ‘great pope’ out of conviction, shouldn’t you do everything you can to cultivate his legacy? Just as Benedict XVI did with regard to John Paul II? As we can see today, Pope Francis has, in fact, done very little to remain in continuity with his predecessors’, Seewald said.”
One example are the restrictions against the Traditional Latin Mass by Pope Francis, that reversed Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum, which acknowledged the right of all priests to say Mass using the Roman Missal of 1962, which is in Latin.
“’Ratzinger wanted to pacify the Church without questioning the validity of the Mass according to the 1969 Roman Missal’, Seewald said. ‘The way we treat the liturgy,’ he explained, ‘determines the destiny of the faith and the Church.’
[…] ‘What I find particularly shameful is that the pope emeritus was not even informed of this act but had to learn about it from the press. He has been stabbed in the heart’.”
The ‘purge’ of staff loyal to Benedict completed the picture, as was the case of Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who served as longtime secretary to Benedict.
“’It was an unprecedented event in the history of the Church that Archbishop Gänswein, the closest collaborator of a highly deserving pope, of the greatest theologian ever to sit on the Chair of Peter, was shamefully thrown out of the Vatican. He did not even receive a word of pro forma thanks for his work’.”
Gänswein was not an isolated case: ‘When a Ratzinger supporter like 75-year-old Cardinal [Raymond] Burke is stripped of his home and salary overnight without any explanation, it is difficult to recognize Christian brotherhood in all of this’.
Read: ‘I’m Still Alive’: Conservative US Cardinal Burke Has First Meeting With Pope Francis in 7 Years
Seewald was not the only one to mark Benedict’s first anniversary of death by criticizing Francis.
As the Vatican marked the first anniversary on Sunday of the death of Pope Benedict XVI, one of his closest aides said the pontiff ‘never would have approved a recent declaration allowing Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples.’
Reuters reported:
“Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, who was the Church’s doctrinal chief under Benedict, and Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, who was Benedict’s private secretary, both German, were two headliners at an event marking the anniversary and organised by the conservative U.S.-based Catholic television network EWTN.
‘It never would have happened (under Benedict) because it was so ambiguous’, Mueller said on the sidelines of the event when asked by Reuters about the landmark declaration issued on Dec. 18.
“While the December declaration says such blessings cannot resemble the sacrament of matrimony between a man and a woman and cannot be part of rituals or liturgies, some advocates of more inclusion of LGBT people saw it as a possible precursor of same-sex marriage in the Church.
‘There is no homosexual matrimony. It does not exist, it cannot exist, despite ideologies we have (today)’, said Mueller, whom Francis removed as head of the Vatican’s doctrinal department after Benedict resigned in 2013.”
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