Pope Benedict obituary: ‘Enforcer in chief’ and first pontiff to resign in over 600 years

More generally, Benedict XVI will be remembered as the first pope to resign in over 600 years. It may become practice. Time will tell. For a man whose hugely influential career as “enforcer in chief” of orthodoxy during the long almost 27 year papacy of Pope John Paul II, it was utterly unexpected.

He forcefully silenced the liberation theologians of Latin America and dissenters such as American Fr Charles Curran, who had questioned the church’s1968 document Humanae Vitae, which banned artificial means of contraception. At the CDF in 1999 he attempted to launch an investigation into a favourite of Pope John Paul II’s, Legionaries of Christ founder Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado, in connection with child sexual abuse but it was stopped by senior figures in the Vatican Curia.

He continued: “It must be admitted that grave errors of judgment were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness.” It did not go down well in the Muslim world. One consequence was that nine out of ten Turks opposed a trip planned for the following November to Turkey. Even as he arrived in Ankara it was still unclear whether Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan would meet him. He did and, later, Pope Benedict prayed at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul as a Muslim would have done but which Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger would probably have found hard to approve.

Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger was born on April 16th 1927 at Marktl in Bavaria. He was the third and youngest child of policeman Joseph Ratzinger and mother Maria. Both his older brother Fr Georg and sister Maria are deceased.

A man that died with serious regret and a lot on his mind. Was responsible for cleaning up, or moving about, the paedophilia ring within the church

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