“The Pope does not fear schism in the Church after his resignation, since his choice to step down was prompted by health concerns, not problems with the papacy. But the betting has already begun over who will take his place. Experts believe a non-European could be chosen. Peter Turkson from Ghana, now head of the Vatican’s justice and peace department, is often tipped as Africa’s frontrunner. Two Latin American candidates are also looking like strong possibilities — Odilo Scherer, archbishop of the huge diocese of Sao Paolo, or the Italian-Argentine Leonardo Sandri, now heading the Vatican department for Eastern Churches.” – Natasha Lennard
Pope Benedict XVI set a couple of precedents in recent months. He became the first social media pontiff, opening a Twitter account late last year. And as of Monday, he is the first pope since the middle ages to resign.
These nontraditional moves aside though, Benedict XVI, formerly Joseph Ratzinger, was a fiercely conservative Catholic leader who failed to challenge a widespread child sex abuse scandal in the church. His papal legacy will include the maintenance of system of impunity for abusers of the church’s most defenseless and innocent members. The Guardian’s Rome correspondent John Hooper noted:
The abuse scandals dominated his seven years as leader of the world’s Catholics. Before his accession, there had been scandals in the United States and Ireland. But in 2010, evidence of clerical sex abuse was made public in a succession of countries in continental Europe, notably Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Benedict’s native Germany.
The pope was himself affected by one of these scandals. It emerged that, while he was archbishop of Munich, a known molester was quietly re-assigned to duties that, in time, allowed him to return to pastoral duties and make contact with young people.
The pope’s failure to properly confront the darkest aspect of his church was particularly disturbing to critics who remember that while serving under his predecessor John Paul II, then-Cardinal Ratzinger had overseen the Vatican department charged with addressing sex abuse cases. According to Hooper, “the future Pope Benedict personally read much of the testimony and, say his apologists, he was deeply shocked and moved by what he learned.”
Commentators already reviewing Benedict XVI’s papacy have already highlighted the paradox that as a fiercely rigorous theological scholar and doctrinal purist, he earned the epithet “God’s rottweiler,” “But after several years into his new job he showed that he not only did not bite but barely even barked,” noted Reuters.
He also tallied a decidedly mixed record when it came to interfaith relations. According to Reuters, “Israel’s chief rabbi praised Benedict’s inter-faith outreach and wished him good health.” But Benedict angered Jews, noted Hooper, when he allowed the wider use by Catholics of and old liturgy which includes a Good Friday plea that Jews be “delivered from their darkness.”
Benedict had served in the Hitler Youth as a child when it was compulsory in Germany, but has vociferously condemned his county’s past treatment of Jewish people. According to Reuters, “he prayed and asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, most of them Jews, died there during World War Two.” Yet, controversially, he lifted the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, Britain’s Richard Williamson. “The Vatican said Benedict had been unaware of Williamson’s views when he acted,” wrote the Guardian’s Hooper.
In a 2006 lecture he caused outrage when he said that Muslims were “only evil and inhuman.” He attempted to mitigate the damage with a trip to Turkey later that year, during which he prayed in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque with a Turkish Mufti.
In electing Benedict at age 78, the Cardinals had, according to commentators, hoped for a brief, stop-gap pope after John Paul II’s long reign. Benedict XVI likely caused more controversy than had been desired. A Twitter account was a thin, modern gloss on a deeply conservative, traditionalist papacy.
A Vatican spokesman said Monday that the Pope does not fear schism in the Church after his resignation, since his choice to step down was prompted by health concerns, not problems with the papacy. But the betting has already begun over who will take his place. Experts believe a non-European could be chosen. Peter Turkson from Ghana, now head of the Vatican’s justice and peace department, is often tipped as Africa’s frontrunner. Two Latin American candidates are also looking like strong possibilities — Odilo Scherer, archbishop of the huge diocese of Sao Paolo, or the Italian-Argentine Leonardo Sandri, now heading the Vatican department for Eastern Churches. – Salon, 11 February 2013
» Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com.
Comment in The Guardian
One of the organisations representing victims of Catholic clergy in Ireland’s notorious orphanages and industrial schools said today that survivors would not miss Pope Benedict, reports Henry McDonald from Dublin.
Irish Survivors of Child Abuse said the outgoing pope had broken all his promises to offer them some semblance of justice for the crimes of priests and other members of religious orders in Ireland.
John Kelly, one of the founders of Irish Soca and a former inmate at Dublin’s notorious Artane Industrial School which was run by the Christian Brothers, said Pope Benedict had resisted their demands to properly investigate and in some instance disband religious orders tainted by sexual and physical abuse.
Speaking in Dublin, Kelly said: “In our view we were let down in terms of promises of inquiries, reform and most importantly of all the Vatican continuing not to acknowledge that any priest or religious found guilty of child abuse would face the civil authorities and be tried for their crimes in the courts.
“I’m afraid to say Pope Benedict won’t be missed as the Vatican continued to block proper investigations into the abuse scandals during his term in office. Nor are we confident that things are going to be different because of all the conservative Cardinals he appointed. For us, he broke his word.”
The verbal assault on the Vatican would have been unthinkable right up to the early 1990s when successive Irish governments were terrified of challenging the Catholic church’s authority because of fears of a blacklash from pulpits across Ireland. – Henry McDonald, Dublin, The Guardian, 11 February 2013
Filed under: india | Tagged: benedict xvi, benedict xvi resigns, child abuse, child sex abuse, christian, christianity, politics, pope, pope benedict xvi, religion, roman catholic church, vatican, vatican bank, vatican sex scandal |
BHARATA BHARATI 
Both Christianity and Islam had a beginning in time therefore they must have an end in history. When and how this will come about is not known.
The West has rejected Marxism, also a kind of Abrahamic religion (in fact a Christian heresy), but it continues to find refuge in India and some other Asian countries.
Hindus have lost the power to discriminate, to think–as Sri Aurobindo put it–and for this reason Christianity will find a refuge in India because they have been taught the falsehood that all religions are the same.
The end of the papacy is a different matter which does not necessarily imply the end of the Jesus cult.
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Do you really think that Islam & Christianity will vanish in comming years? Who will eraze them? Will it be peaceful or forceful?
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Who offered Benedict XVI the poisoned chalice? Was it the Jesuits (again) or Opus Dei? No pope has resigned in 600 years and there is no obvious reason for this one to do so now.
Pope Benedict has been threatened or pressured to resign.
He knew all about the child abuse in the church and did nothing about it though he was JP’s II’s point man. There are still groups of abuse victims who want him tried in the ICC.
To his credit he told the truth about St. Thomas not coming to South India (it is a different matter that his editors changed his statement the next day to include South India in Mar Thoma’s travels). He said:
“Thomas first evangelised Syria and Persia and then penetrated as far as western India, from where Christianity also reached South India.”
The term “western India” means Gandara or what is today Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. See “Pope Benedict XVI Denies St. Thomas Evangelized South India.”
Kerala Christians will be quite happy to see the end of Benedict XVI. Are they already distributing sweets in the churches–or is that a heathen custom not followed in Catholic and Syrian Orthodox churches?
According to some predictions, this is the second to last pope. The next pope will bring to an end the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church.
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