Francis & Benedict: Papacies in Continuity

by Greg Daly

Earlier this month, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI raised eyebrows around the world when, in a letter to the Church in Poland marking the centenary of the birth of Pope St John Paul II, he pointed to what he sees as a profound thematic unity between the papacies of the Polish Pope and his Argentine successor, Pope Francis. 

‘Through the resurrected Christ, God’s mercy is intended for every individual,’ the Pope Emeritus wrote. ‘Although this centre of Christian existence is given to us only in faith, it is also philosophically significant, because if God’s mercy were not a fact, then we would have to find our way in a world where the ultimate power of good against evil is not recognisable.

‘It is finally, beyond this objective historical significance, indispensable for everyone to know that in the end God’s mercy is stronger than our weakness. Moreover, at this point, the inner unity of the message of John Paul II and the basic intentions of Pope Francis can also be found: John Paul II is not the moral rigorist as some have partially portrayed him. With the centrality of divine mercy, he gives us the opportunity to accept moral requirement for man, even if we can never fully meet it. Besides, our moral endeavours are made in the light of divine mercy, which proves to be a force that heals for our weakness.’

That Benedict’s analysis will have been startling to many is disappointing, though perhaps not surprising, given how from the first much commentary on Francis’ papacy has read it as a decisive break – for good or ill – with the papacies of his predecessors, rather than in continuity with St John Paul and Benedict XVI. Certainly, those who paid attention to Francis’ life in South America, whether as a seminary head, a Jesuit provincial, an exiled confessor, or a bishop championing a new evangelisation, will have expected such continuity. 

Indeed, in his 2005 book The Rise of Benedict XVI, veteran Vaticanista John Allen had identified the then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as someone with real similarities to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, such that he was seen as plausibly drawing conclave votes from the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI:

‘A Jesuit, Bergoglio has a reputation as a man of great humility, deep spirituality, and unwavering commitment to rather traditional doctrinal views. In that sense, some of the Latin Americans felt, he could attract some of the Ratzinger votes but at the same time appeal to moderates attracted to the very idea of a non-European Pope.’

Since his retirement in 2013 Pope Benedict has on several occasions taken pains to indicate not merely his support for his successor, but his belief that he is following an established papal path. In March 2016, for instance, during the same week that saw the finalisation of Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis’ exhortation on marriage and the family, an interview was published that showed the extent to which Benedict sees God’s mercy as uniting the papacies of Francis and St John Paul. 

‘I believe it is “a sign of the times” that the idea of God’s mercy is becoming increasingly central and dominant – starting with Sister Faustina, whose visions in various ways deeply reflect God’s image among today’s mankind and its desire for divine goodness,’ he told the Jesuit theologian Fr Jacques Servais.

‘Pope John Paul II felt this impulse very strongly even though this was not always immediately apparent. But it is certainly no coincidence that his last book, which was published just before his death, talks about God’s mercy. Inspired by his experience of human cruelty right from his younger days, he states that mercy is the only true and ultimately efficient reaction against the force of evil. Only where there is mercy does cruelty cease to exist, do evil and violence cease to exist.

‘Pope Francis fully shares this line,’ Benedict continued. ‘His pastoral practice finds expression in his continuous references to God’s mercy. It is mercy that steers us towards God, while justice makes us fearful in his presence. I believe this shows that beneath the veneer of self-confidence and self-righteousness, today’s mankind conceals a profound knowledge of its wounds and unworthiness before God. It awaits mercy.’

That these words should have been published in the same week that Amoris Laetitia was completed is striking, given how according to Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, who publicly launched the exhortation a few weeks later, the retired pope regards the new exhortation as a companion-piece to St John Paul’s own 1981 exhortation on marriage and the family, Familiaris Consortio. The former Pope, his onetime student says, shares the view that the two exhortations form a sort of ‘diptych’. 

A few months later, at a 28 June 2016 event to mark the 65th anniversary of his priestly ordination, the Pope Emeritus explicitly thanked and praised Pope Francis, in terms he would later echo in striking fashion, and highlighted the importance of Francis’ emphasis on God’s mercy: 

‘Thank you above all to you, Holy Father: your goodness, from the first moment of your election, in every moment of my life here, strikes me, and truly brings me, in an inner sense, more than in the Vatican Gardens, with their beauty, your goodness is the place where I live: I feel protected. Thank you also for your words of thanks, for everything. And let us hope that you will be able to continue with all of us on this path of Divine Mercy, showing the way of Jesus, to Jesus, to God.’

July 2017 saw some confusion around the issue of Benedict’s support for his successor, with comments he submitted to be read at the funeral of the German Cardinal Joachim Meisner being mistranslated and misrepresented throughout the media in such as a way as to give the impression that under Francis the Church is facing ruin.

‘What moved me all the more was that, in this last period of his life, he learned to let go and to live out of a deep certainty that the Lord does not abandon His Church, even whenever the boat has taken on so much water as to be on the verge of capsizing,’ Benedict had written, only for a host of articles to falsely report him as having said ‘when’ rather than ‘when sometimes’. 

The following week, Benedict’s personal secretary Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who had read the Pope Emeritus’s comments at the funeral, criticised as ‘stupid people’ those who tried to exploit Benedict to attack Francis. Speaking to the Italian daily Il Giornale, he said: ‘The emeritus pope was deliberately exploited, he wasn’t alluding to anything specific with that phrase, but talking about the situation of the Church of today and that of the past as a boat that doesn’t sail in calm waters. Francis also says this.’

It is worth remembering, of course, that in his 2005 Good Friday Way of the Cross meditations, which he wrote when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict had written ‘Lord, your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side.’ Pope Francis has praised this text on several occasions. 

Just weeks later, in a 31 July introduction to The Triune God: Christian Faith in a Secular Age, a book of essays written to honour Cardinal Gerhard Müller ahead of his 70th birthday, the Pope Emeritus acknowledged Pope Francis as someone who was trying to grasp and communicate how the teachings of the Church can be lived in the modern world. ‘You defended the clear traditions of the Faith,’ he wrote, ‘but in the spirit of Pope Francis you also sought to understand how they can be lived today.’

February 2018, then, saw two striking comments by Benedict that made his feelings about his successor utterly clear. On 5 February, in a letter to a columnist for the prestigious Corriera della Sera newspaper, the Pope Emeritus said, echoing his June 2016 comments on life with Pope Francis, ‘It’s a great grace, in this last, at times tiring, stage of my journey, to be surrounded by a love and goodness that I could have never imagined.’  

He would go on to underline his admiration for his successor in a letter he wrote two days later, thanking Msgr Dario Edoardo Viganò, the then-Prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications, for the gift of eleven small books about the theology of Pope Francis. 

‘I applaud this initiative that wants to oppose and react to the foolish prejudice in which Pope Francis is just a practical man without particular theological or philosophical formation, while I have been only a theorist of theology with little understanding of the concrete life of a Christian today,’ he wrote.

‘The small volumes show, rightly, that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation, and they therefore help to see the inner continuity between the two pontificates, despite all the differences of style and temperament.’

Much commentary on this letter focused on how it was initially publicised with a photograph emphasising only part of the letter and omitting how Benedict had made it clear that given his own physical frailty and commitments on his time he had not been able to read the books properly. In doing this, however, the commentary omitted the importance of the phrase ‘show, rightly’ – ‘monstrano a ragione’ in the original letter – through which Benedict says that the set of books would be telling him something he knew anyway: that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation, whose pontificate shared an inner continuity with his own.

A year later, at the end of a lengthy reflection he wrote attempting to grapple – not for the first time – with how clerics who had celebrated and received the sacraments innumerable times could have done horrendous harm to children in their care, the Pope Emeritus concluded his thoughts by thanking Pope Francis as somebody who constantly tries to point to God’s light. 

‘At the end of my reflections I would like to thank Pope Francis for everything he does to show us, again and again, the light of God, which has not disappeared, even today. Thank you, Holy Father!’

For some, of course, even interventions such as these are too much from the former pope. He resigned, after all, and said he would be committing himself to a life of silence and obedience. In speaking out, even in support of his successor, he is breaking his word and sowing confusion in the Church.

On this, it is worth turning to what Pope Francis himself said, a year after becoming Pope and a few weeks after Benedict surprised people by appearing at a consistory where new cardinals were appointed at St Peter’s. In a 5 March 2014 interview with Corriera della Sera, the Pope said he sometimes asked the advice of his predecessor, describing his wisdom as a gift from God.

‘The Pope emeritus is not a statue in a museum. It is an institution,’ he said, pointing to how decades ago there was no such thing as a ‘bishop emeritus’ but now we have become used to the institution. 

‘The same thing must happen for the Pope emeritus. Benedict is the first and perhaps there will be others. We don’t know. He is discreet, humble, and he doesn’t want to disturb. We have spoken about it and we decided together that it would be better that he sees people, gets out and participates in the life of the Church. He once came here for the blessing of the statue of St. Michael the Archangel, then to lunch at Santa Marta and, after Christmas, I sent him an invitation to participate in the consistory and he accepted.

‘His wisdom is a gift of God. Some would have wished that he retire to a Benedictine abbey far from the Vatican. I thought of grandparents and their wisdom. Their counsels give strength to the family and they do not deserve to be in an elderly home,’ he said.

If Pope Francis is content for Benedict to be a visible figure who can share his wisdom with the world, who are we to argue?