Elisabetta Povoledo
The write has been writing about Italy for nearly three decades
On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, as Pope Francis rested in the quarters of his humble residence before an evening Mass, gendarmes closed off to visitors the winding walking paths that cross the Vatican gardens in case Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, frail as he was, walked out of his monastery to pray.
In the near-decade since Benedict stunned the Catholic Church and the world by becoming the first pontiff in nearly 600 years to retire, an awkward and captivating arrangement pervaded the church. Two popes, past and present, traditionalist and reformist, both cloaked in white robes and invested with moral authority, coexisted on the same minuscule grounds.
That oddness, unprecedented in the modern era of the church, persisted after the death of Benedict on Saturday morning, as the church again found itself in rare territory, with a living pope set to preside over the funeral of his predecessor
The funeral of Benedict XVI will be held on Thursday morning and will be “presided over by Pope Francis, evidently,” said Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni, who delivered what he called the “sad news” of the death in a short statement that made sure to refer to Benedict without fail as “pope emeritus” — in both Italian and English — to avoid any confusion. He declined to answer questions. “I don’t think now is the time for questions to leave us time for some sadness in our heart.”
The timing was also inopportune because no one was quite sure what exactly would happen and what the first funeral for a pope emeritus would look like.
“The question is complicated,” said Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, a historian of the papacy.
Those complications were immediately inescapable. Bruni said the funeral would be “simple,” and “solemn but sober,” in keeping with Benedict’s wishes. But Benedict, having retained his title of pontiff, if an emeritus one, was no simple cardinal, and it was not clear if he would receive the full procedural pomp and circumstance for a pontiff who died in office, among other things.
Two official delegations will be present, those of Germany and Italy. But would other nations send representatives? Benedict’s Fisherman’s Ring — the seal used for papal documents — was already destroyed, so it wouldn’t need to be. But would his study and bedroom be closed off?
When a pope dies, cardinals come from around the world to gather to mourn, but also to vote in the conclave that elects his successor. “Clearly that’s not an issue in this case,” Paravicini Bagliani said, adding that the cardinals who did come would do so solely “as mourners.”
The Vatican said Benedict’s body will be displayed to the faithful for a final “farewell” in St Peter’s Basilica on Monday morning. Until then, his remains would stay at Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, where he lived during his nearly 10-year post-papacy.
Benedict had expressed a desire to be buried in the Vatican grottoes, underneath the basilica, in the niche where two former popes, St John XXIII and St John Paul II, were buried before the transfer of their remains to chapels in the basilica. The Vatican on Saturday confirmed that he will be buried in the grottoes but hasn’t yet announced exactly where.
All the decisions, according to The Seismograph, a website deeply sourced in the Vatican, belonged to Francis alone.
“At this moment, my thought naturally goes to dear Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who left us this morning,” Francis said during a church service on Saturday in St Peter’s. “We are moved as we recall him as such a noble person, so kind. And we feel such gratitude in our hearts: gratitude to God for having given him to the church and to the world; gratitude to him for all the good he accomplished; and above all, for his witness of faith and prayer, especially in these last years of his recollected life.”
Francis’ forbearers in the medieval era took a less than gracious approach toward their resigned predecessors.
When Celestine V resigned in 1294 to live like a monk, his successor, Pope Boniface VIII, in part fearing a rival claim, threw him in jail and deprived him a pope’s funeral when he died in 1296. When Gregory XII stepped down from the throne in 1415, the last pope to resign before Benedict, he reverted to being a cardinal and he received the funeral rites reserved for a cardinal when he died two years later.
In 1802, Pius VII presided over the funeral of his predecessor, Pius VI, whose body returned to the Vatican after he died in 1799 in exile.
The uncertainty surrounding the rituals honouring Benedict in death stemmed from the decision that generated the confusion in the last years of his life. After Benedict resigned, he promised to be “hidden from the world,” an oath he mostly kept. But to the dismay of many, he took the title of pope emeritus, keeping his white robes and a following of ideological conservatives who tried to make him into an alternative power center.
He also sometimes undercut Francis. In a 2019 essay, he — or aides writing in his name — asserted that abuse was a symptom of the revolution of the 1960s, secularisationS and an erosion of morality that he pinned on liberal theology. That undercut Francis’ view that it resulted from an unhealthy abuse of power by clerics who held themselves above their flock. - New York Times.
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