Pope Benedict XVI, who served as leader of the Catholic church from 2005 until his resignation in 2013, died on Saturday at the age of 95, three days after his successor, Pope Francis, warned the world that he was seriously ill.
The Vatican announced that Francis would preside over Benedict’s funeral in St. Peter’s Square on Thursday. From Monday, his body will rest in St Peter’s Basilica to allow the faithful to pay their respects.
Benedict’s death closes an unprecedented period in recent history where two popes have coexisted, a situation that has caused tensions in rival camps in the Vatican. It eases the way for his successor, Pope Francis, to consider whether to follow Benedict by retiring at some point, impossible while the result would have been three popes.
Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer paid warm tribute to Benedict, referring to his visit to the UK in 2010 as a historic moment. Other world leaders including Ireland’s Michael D Higgins, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Germany’s Olaf Scholz also paid tribute.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster and leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, said he was a scholar, pastor and man of God who would be remembered for “his courtesy, his gentleness, his perception of his mind and the openness of his welcome to all he met”.
Justin Welby, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, said Benedict was “one of the greatest theologians of his time”.
Earlier this week, Pope Francis announced during his weekly audience that Benedict was “very ill” and asked people to pray for him.
Benedict, born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger in Germany in 1927, was a deeply conservative pontiff whose tenure was overshadowed by church sex abuse scandals. He retired leaving a checkered reputation after a papacy that was at times divisive.
The son of a policeman, he grew up in rural Bavaria and at the age of 14 joined the Hitler Youth, a requirement, and served in the German army in World War II. Towards the end of the war, he deserted and was briefly held as a prisoner of war by US forces.
He later became an important figure in the Vatican and, as Cardinal Ratzinger, served as the right-hand man of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. He led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican department known as the Inquisition, for 24 years, a position that earned him the nickname “God’s Rottweiler.”
During his tenure, allegations of clerical sexual abuse and its cover-up began to emerge. His critics said he failed to realize the gravity of the crimes and the scale of the crisis, which peaked several years after he was elected pope in April 2005.
In addition to the barrage of allegations, lawsuits and official reports related to sexual abuse and priests’ complicity in covering it up, the Vatican was also rocked by the theft of confidential documents, many of which appeared later in an exposé of alleged corruption. In October 2012, a Vatican court convicted the pope’s personal butler, Paolo Gabriele, of stealing the papers. He told the trial that he had been acting against “evil and corruption”.
The divisive papacy of Benedict XVI: obituary video
Benedict held uncompromising positions on homosexuality and contraception. He had strongly opposed liberation theology, a radical movement that began in South America in the 1960s and advocated clerical social activism among the poor and marginalized.
His sudden resignation at the age of 85 in February 2013, the first pope to do so since the Middle Ages, left the church reeling. At the time he said he did not have the strength to continue as the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion beloved Catholics. “I have had to admit my inability to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me,” he said.
He took the title of Pope Emeritus, and undertook to remain “hidden from the world”, dedicating himself to private prayer. He retired to a monastery in Vatican City, where he read, wrote letters and articles, received guests and played the piano.
But the former pope remained a powerful conservative influence and a focus for opponents of Francis’ efforts to reform the church and reorient it to serve the poor. He repeatedly made his views known through letters, articles and interviews. In April 2019, two months after Francis called a groundbreaking Vatican conference on sexual abuse, Benedict published a 6,000-word letter saying the abuse was a product of a culture of sexual freedom that dates back to the 1960s .
In January 2020, Benedict publicly defended clerical celibacy as Francis was considering allowing married men to become priests in limited circumstances. “I cannot be silent,” he wrote in a book, From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church, arguing that priestly celibacy protected the mystery of the church.
The controversy, which erupted just before The Two Popes, a film about the apparently warm relationship between Benedict and Francis, aired on Netflix, exposed tensions between rival camps in the Vatican.
Additional reporting by Angela Giuffrida in Rome