The Death of Pope Benedict XVI: One Year Later
The "faithful friend of the bridegroom" and oldest living man to have served as Bishop of Rome died on this date in 2022
A version of this essay first appeared in the Inland Catholic, the official magazine of the Catholic Diocese of Spokane, in Lent 2023 and has been reprinted with permission.
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The best popes never want the job.
For example, there was Pope St. Pius V, who amidst the burgeoning Protestant Reformation and the invading Ottoman Turks was elected “despite his tears and entreaties” to lead the Church in the 16th Century.
Likewise, Pope St. Pius X, when preparing to enter the 1903 conclave that elected him to follow Leo XIII, joked with a friend that he had been in each of his assignments for nine years, including the present one as Patriarch of Venice, and so, “either I become pope now, or I die.” When his friend noted that he would make a great pope, the soon-to-be Pius quipped, “Rather dead than pope.”
And then St. Gregory the Great, in the most dramatic of fashion (at least according to legend), went so far as to don the clothing of a peasant, convince some merchants to hide him in a wine cask and smuggle him out of Rome, then hide out in the woods for three days…only to be betrayed by a beam of light careening from the heavens with angels ascending and descending.
To be sure, Joseph Ratzinger, the man who became Pope Benedict XVI, never went to such lengths – perhaps there were tears and entreaties in private – but he nevertheless gave off a similar sentiment. Not only did Ratzinger not want the papacy, he had in fact begged Pope St. John Paul II to allow him retirement in his Bavarian homeland numerous times over the prior decades while serving as his doctrinal chief, only to be rejected at every turn.
At any rate, each of these men, and others like them throughout history, all share something else in common: the best popes talk often of personal conversion, of praying for one another, and ultimately their trust in Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior of their life, particularly when it comes to being placed in such a position of power.
So, when trying to understand a man like Benedict XVI – easily one of the most misunderstood and falsely maligned figures in recent memory (looking at you, The Two Popes) – and the legacy he wished to leave on the world, this is precisely the place to start.
Many in the media, for example, have noted that Pope Francis only mentioned his predecessor once by name in the homily he gave at Benedict’s funeral Mass, wondering if it was some sort of slight. But in my view, it was a perfect – if perhaps unintentional – tribute of a man who would have it no other way.
Pope Benedict XVI was known for many things – he’s arguably the best theologian to ever grace the Chair of Peter, was the last living major contributor to the Second Vatican Council, and in 2021 he became the oldest living man to have ever held the papacy – and yet the things for which he hoped to be remembered were his desire to love Christ, to accept His love fully in return, and to share that great love with others.
Benedict said as much in his first encyclical after being elected pope, Deus Caritas Est (“God is Love”), released on Christmas Day in 2005:
Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift. Certainly, as the Lord tells us, one can become a source from which rivers of living water flow. Yet to become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God.
Of course, Pope Benedict XVI was far from perfect. He freely admitted to not possessing natural skill or interest in the administrative side of the Church, nor the political requirements and usual affinity for Vatican intrigue that has historically come with the papacy. And despite his blameless record in dealing harshly with those responsible for abuse in the Church, there are, as it were, so many holes in Rome for rats to hide that even a great man like Benedict can’t hope to trap them all.
But even still, as St. Peter himself writes in Scripture, “Love covers a multitude of sins” – not to excuse brokenness and personal shortcomings, but to allow the Lord to redeem us through them.
It was this very thing that Benedict talked about when giving a lecture in his native Germany in 2011:
The Fathers explain it in this way: we have nothing to give God, we have only our sin to place before him. And this he receives and makes his own, while in return he gives us himself and his glory: a truly unequal exchange, which is brought to completion in the life and passion of Christ.
That speech was a microcosm of what the pope wished for his fellow Christians and for the Church as a whole – to return our primary focus to Christ and away from all of the fleeting comforts that the world promises or the degeneracy of some of her human agents.
Indeed, Benedict is famous for noting as a young priest that Catholicism will end up ultimately as a “smaller, purer Church”, not because it will grow more exclusionary, but because as the world becomes more secular and necessarily strips more and more of the Church’s worldly power and riches away, there will only remain those who truly love Christ and are willing to sacrifice their life for Him.
In his 95 years of life, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a total of 66 books, 3 encyclicals, and 4 apostolic exhortations, along with countless homilies, lectures, and other public addresses. And yet, it can all be boiled down to his last four words, spoken mere hours before he entered eternity: “Lord, I love you!”
The coming months and years will be replete with much grander analysis and exposition of the life and legacy of Pope Benedict XVI, and hopefully one day we’ll see his name raised to the altars alongside his other sainted predecessors.
But for now, we can be content to join Pope Francis in saying: “Benedict, faithful friend of the Bridegroom, may your joy be complete as you hear his voice, now and forever!”