The chiaroscuro legacy of the first German Pope

Pope Benedict XVI speaks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Munich in September 2006. POOL (REUTERS)

The death of Benedict XVI, the first German-speaking Pope of the modern era, has generated in his country an avalanche of messages of condolence and recognition of his figure as a theologian and person responsible for shaping the Catholic Church in recent decades.

But the German Catholic community, which enthusiastically celebrated the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 2005, is also keenly aware of the clerical abuse scandal in which he was involved during his papacy and, personally, near the end of his life. .

His role in the biggest crisis the Catholic Church has ever experienced casts shadows on his legacy.

The front pages of the sensationalist

, the most widely read newspaper in Germany, serve as a metaphor for that transition from joy to disappointment in a country with a powerful Catholic Church that, although it continues to lose its faithful, still has more than 23 million members.

“We are Pope”, he headlined when it became known that Ratzinger would occupy the chair of Saint Peter, appropriating his figure: “Our Joseph Ratzinger will be Benedict XVI”.

Almost 17 years later, after the scandal of his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising came to light, the newspaper pulled the eighth commandment to throw a dart at him: "You shall not lie!"

Front page of the German newspaper Bild from 2005 when Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope.

Born in 1927 in Marktl am Inn, in Bavaria, into a very religious family, Joseph Ratzinger entered the seminary at the age of 12 in Traunstein, the town where his father, a bailiff opposed to National Socialism, was then stationed.

Shortly after, he joined the Hitler Youth, but as his biographer, Peter Seewald, recalls, in the monumental work of more than 1,100 pages that portrays the life of Benedict XVI, then it was compulsory and all his companions went through the

.

In the same way that later, in 1943, all the seminarians were mobilized.

He ended up assigned to an anti-aircraft battery, a position from which he fled the following year despite the fact that the deserters ran the risk of being shot.

Image of Joseph Ratzinger in the uniform of the German Army in 1943. KNA-Bild (REUTERS)

After spending a few months in a prison camp, he arrived in Munich, where he completed Theology and Philosophy.

When he participated in the Second Vatican Council as an adviser, in 1962, he was already a well-known professor and one of the most influential theologians of his generation.

If already then he stood out for being one of the protagonists of such an outstanding event at only 35 years old, in 1977 he made history again when Pope Paul VI ordained him Archbishop of Munich and Freising and made him, at 50, the youngest cardinal of the Catholic Church.

The next pope, John Paul II of Poland, took him to Rome in 1982 as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position he held for 23 years.

As the supreme authority on questions of dogma, he resided in the old building of the Holy Inquisition.

During his pontificate he followed the conservative course of his predecessor.

He resisted modernizing the Church, which earned him criticism inside and outside Germany.

The English tabloids nicknamed him “God's Rottweiler”, but the German media also called him

, as he was known in Rome (

means tank).

In 2005 he chose the name Benedict XVI in homage to Saint Benedict, promoter of monastic life, and Benedict XV, the Pope who condemned World War I as "the suicide of civilized Europe."

His pontificate will be remembered because he was the first Pope in more than 800 years to resign, and until now it has not been known exactly what pushed him to make that decision.

His eight-year term was overshadowed by the

case and by the scandal of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, which broke out in Germany in 2010. That year Benedict XVI was the first pontiff to meet with victims of abuse.

This is how he who was his personal secretary for the last two decades, also German Archbishop Georg Gänswein, recalls him in an obituary published this Saturday: “The Pope listened in silence and consoled the troubled hearts of those affected.

The mere presence of him and his tears, which he could not suppress, were worth more than words ”.

In 2022, when he had been retired from public life for almost 10 years and secluded in the Mater Ecclesiae convent, in the Vatican gardens, the latest scandal broke, which this time had to do with his own handling of abuse cases during his time as Archbishop of Munich and Freising, between 1977 and 1982. A devastating report commissioned by the Archbishopric of Munich from a law firm accused him of covering up or failing to act in four of the 497 cases documented between 1945 and 2019. The most notable is that of Peter H., a priest transferred to Munich after having committed abuses in his diocese of Essen (western Germany).

Benedict XVI initially claimed not to have participated in the meeting in which the case was discussed, but later rectified and attributed his first statement to "a transcription error."

The president of the German Episcopal Conference, Georg Bätzing, encouraged him to apologize and acknowledge the cover-up.

The first he did, in an open letter last February in which he apologized to the victims, underlining the "deep shame" and "deep pain" he felt.

He also showed that he was hurt because he was called a "liar".

He always categorically denied the accusations of inaction, and in the case of Peter H. he argued that he was unaware that he had committed abuses in his parish.

The German leaders extolled the work of Benedict XVI, "the German pope", without overlooking the controversy of his figure.

Foreign Minister Olaf Scholz said in a brief condolence note on Saturday that the news filled him with great sadness.

The world, he said, has lost "a formative figure in the Catholic Church, a controversial personality and an intelligent theologian."

Angela Merkel, who was chancellor during his pontificate and met with him both in Rome and in Germany, noted that "the Catholic Church, Germany and the world have lost one of the most controversial and important religious thinkers of our time." .

In one of her obituaries, the

also refers to him thus: “The controversial theologian”.

Bätzing referred to Benedict XVI this Saturday as an "impressive theologian" and "experienced pastor" and lamented "the loss of a personality who gave hope and direction to the Church, even in difficult times."

But in his elegy he also echoed the stain of a brilliant career in the Church: "He asked those affected for forgiveness, but questions remained unanswered."

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