On December 31, 2022, BENEDICT XVI ascended to heaven, the second Pope to renounce the Pontifical Office (after Celestine V) and the first to adopt the title of Pope Emeritus. Joseph Ratzinger dies at 9:34 on the last day of the year after days in which the media had talked about the precarious health conditions of the former pontiff. Pope Ratzinger was a fundamental Pontiff. He was the one who had to fill the legacy of the long pontificate of John Paul II. For many he was a Pontiff overshadowed by many problems that gripped and still gripped the church. In reality Ratzinger was an example of rigor and faith, although not as ostentatious as his predecessor. It was Ratzinger who dictated the first guidelines with the fundamental criteria: to inform the Holy See, to follow the provisions of civil justice and to remove suspicion from pastoral activities. Five years after the election, in July 2010, new changes were made to the norms of “De delictis gravioribus” drawn up by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, changes approved by the Pope himself.
However, there are some obscure and questionable themes: many media have written that the Pope Emeritus never expressed a word of solidarity with the family of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of the Vatican clerk who disappeared into thin air on June 22, 1983. A complex and obscure story to which a solution has never been reached, not even with the most disparate conjectures over the course of these decades. In any case, the girl’s tragic mystery occurred when Ratzinger was not yet Pope. After about 8 years of pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI resigns to the amazement of many faithful and even lay people. The real reason for Benedict XVI’s resignation has never been fully clarified, although he has spoken of it on a few occasions. For example, he denied that he was forced to resign, or that he was influenced, always saying that he acted “in complete freedom”. And on the day of his resignation he said that «in order to steer the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, vigor of both body and soul is also necessary, vigor which, in recent months, has diminished in me to such an extent that I have to recognize my inability to properly administer the ministry entrusted to me”
to continue reading the article…
https://www.gabrieleromano.org/archive/the-death-of-pope-benedict-xvi.html
° BLOG ° Gabriele Romano 