The successor – a papal past and present
Jesus gave the keys to each Peter to open access to the Kingdom of God, not to close it.
In a revealing new book, Pope Francis not only speaks frankly about his relationship with Pope Benedict, but suggests a key to understanding the relationship between all pontificates.
IT CAN BE HARD to keep up with the steady flow of books on, by and “with” Pope Francis, and while some – like the heavily pre-marketed Life, his recent musings on historical events with Fabio Marchese Ragona – throw up gems, they mostly retread familiar ground. But El Sucesor: Mis recuerdos de Benedicto XVI (“The Successor: My Memories of Benedict XVI”), so far only available in Spanish, will be seen as one of the publishing events of the pontificate.It is clear that Francis saw the need not just to correct the record for its own sake but to repair some of the damage caused by Benedict’s unruly parallel court, including to Benedict’s own reputation. Francis obviously likes and trusts his collaborator, the Spanish journalist Javier Martínez-Brocal; there is a vibe between them which opens up new horizons in their conversation and makes the book unusually clear and candid. Martínez is a 46year-old layman, an Opus Dei numerary who has been a Rome-based Vaticanista since before Benedict’s election. In a major interview on 13 December 2022 for the Madrid daily ABC, Francis spoke very fondly of the Pope Emeritus; but when Benedict died just two weeks later, stories resurfaced of supposed tensions between them, egged on by opponents to Francis.
Archbishop Georg Gänswein’s catty memoir Nothing But the Truth: My Life Beside Benedict XVI, full of snide innuendoes and attempts to show that Benedict disapproved of his successor, appeared almost immediately. A few weeks later, Martínez put to Francis the idea of a book about the two Popes’ coexistence. “Benedict deserves something like that,” Francis agreed. But they didn’t begin to work on it until July last year.
BENEDICT, WHO HAD professed obedience to whoever was chosen at the 2013 conclave, was utterly loyal, and deferential to Francis’ authority: “He fulfilled that vow,” the Pope says. “I can attest to this.” In the early years he was an important sounding board, helping Francis to broaden his vision and make good decisions. Benedict singled out his June 2019 red-flag letter to the Church in Germany about their synodal process for particular praise. Benedict remained loyal despite intense pressures on him from groups opposed to Francis, who were indulged by Benedict’s entourage, notably Gänswein. Martínez goes over various episodes in which the retired Pope was manipulated by groups angry with Francis, but in Francis’ telling always came out defending his successor, explaining to them why Francis had taken the position he had over, for example, civil unions for same-sex couples.
Francis believes that Benedict was never able to break free of those pressures, either as Pope or as emeritus. The Roman Curia, says Francis, “didn’t understand his freedom”. It is clear that releasing the papacy from the Curia’s stranglehold was one of Francis’ major priorities. Benedict, observes Francis, was gentle, delicate and humble, preferring not to assert himself, and this was taken advantage of by certain people in the Curia who “limited his movements” and “fenced him in”, causing him great suffering. A small but telling example was the way Gänswein prevented Benedict from having contact with certain people he cared about. Anyone who has read Peter Seewald’s biography of Benedict – heavily dependent on Gänswein’s point of view – will know of Gänswein’s jealousy towards Josef Clemens, Ratzinger’s private secretary before he became Pope. Francis describes how Benedict remained very close to Clemens, and often had dinner with him on Sundays (Clemens was a good cook). But gradually, “with this or that excuse”, the dinners ceased, says Francis, “to the point where, one Sunday, enedict phoned Clemens and told him: ‘Now at last I can call you, because Don Georg has gone out.’” Even more telling than the anecdote itself is the fact Francis wanted Martínez (and us) to know about it.
Gänswein emerges badly from the notorious episode involving the traditionalist cardinal Robert Sarah, former prefect of liturgy, who in January 2020 announced he had coauthored a book with Benedict XVI that argued against any change in the discipline of obligatory celibacy. The story caused outrage: the possibility of ordaining married viri probati had come up in the Amazonia synod of October 2019, to which Francis was preparing a response, and it looked as if the retired Pope was attempting to pressure his successor.
Worse, the book appeared to yoke Benedict to Sarah’s extracurricular theology (the cardinal claimed that there was “an ontological-sacramental link between the priesthood and celibacy” and that married priests lacked the “fullness of the priesthood”). In the ensuing imbroglio, it became clear that Benedict was horrified at being described as Sarah’s co-author; he had simply contributed a short (and uncontroversial) essay at Sarah’s request. Benedict asked for his name to be removed from the cover – which, incredibly, Ignatius Press in the US (which had received reassurances from Gänswein) refused to do.
There were rumours at the time that Francis was furious with Gänswein. Francis says Gänswein “sometimes made life difficult for me” and that following that episode he had removed Gänswein from his functions as prefect of the papal household, describing a “good secretary” as “one who helps you and leaves no trace”. Francis also mentions the time Gänswein encouraged Mgr Livio Melina, president of the John Paul II Institute until 2016, to pay his respects to Benedict, later circulating a photo of the meeting. At the time, Melina and his supporters were drumming up opposition to the institute’s makeover, accusing Francis of betrayal and heresy. The photo made it look “as if Benedict were contesting my decision”, says Francis, adding: “Honestly, that was not right.”
Gänswein never forgave the Pope for his removal, seeing it as a humiliating affront to his dignity. Nothing But the Truth, emailed to journalists in PDF even as the Emeritus Pope was laid out in St Peter’s, was his attempt at revenge. Even Francis was stunned by its timing, its disloyalty and its untruths. “It pained me that Benedict should be used,” he tells Martínez. If the Pope’s reaction could be guessed at, it still comes as a shock to learn the way Francis was excluded by Gänswein from the funeral arrangements. Had Benedict left instructions? Martínez asks. “As far as I know, no,” Francis answers. “But there was a big aduana (“tollhouse”) there, so I never found about anything.” Aduana has a clear resonance in the Francis lexicon: it is the word he uses to describe the mentality he critiques in Evangelii Gaudium: “The Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems.”) As an example of that aduana, Francis describes visiting Benedict on the eve of his death, when he was conscious but unable to speak. Francis movingly describes their final exchange and his blessing of goodbye; but then, on the way out of Benedict’s convent, “something ugly happened”. The nurse accompanying Francis was accused by one of Benedict’s doctors of being a “snitch”. Francis realised that the doctors had Benedict “in custody”; their mentality was “to keep everything closed”.
There are many such stories in El Sucesor. A tantalising anecdote recalls the time a group of retired cardinals in Benedict’s shadow court were invited to a lunch by “an elegant lady”. Most people will at once spot this as the German “it-girl” turned traditionalist, Princess Gloria Thurn und Taxis. The diners all laid into Francis. The Pope found out about it “by chance”, and spoke of it to a cardinal sitting next to him, who turned out to be one of those present. The cardinal, conscience-stricken, two days later publicly knelt before Francis and asked his forgiveness. It is easy to imagine at least some of the cardinals who were at the lunch – Gerhard Müller, Raymond Burke, Robert Sarah, Joseph Zen et al. have been regular guests at the Thurn und Taxis palazzo – but it is hard to imagine any of them kneeling before a pope they despise.
FRANCIS DOES NOT deny the differences between the two Popes. He praises Benedict for “some decisions I took which naturally he didn’t agree with, but which with his silence he always respected”, adding: “You need holiness and manliness for that.” The most obvious tension was over Francis’ curbs on the preconciliar Mass. In his memoir, Gänswein makes great play of the discomfort that Traditionis Custodes apparently caused Benedict, claiming it was “a mistake, because it placed at risk the attempt at pacification” Benedict had sought in his 2009 edict liberalising use of the old rite. But those passages tell us more about Gänswein’s views than Benedict’s; Francis tells Martínez that the two Popes never discussed it. The truth is probably that the move did pain Benedict, but he carefully kept those feelings to himself.
Martínez has a beautiful description of Benedict’s funeral (“the last time the two Popes met”) and ends by reflecting on the tensions and contrasts between the two pontificates. Ever the wise teacher, Francis lends him his copy of Romano Guardini’s book on polarities, the topic of the Pope’s doctoral thesis. There, Martínez discovers the key to understanding the relationship not just between the two pontificates, but between all pontificates: of a dynamic, unbroken tradition of authority, in which differences of emphasis are not so much contradictions as dynamic polarities. The greatest continuity of all, Martínez concludes, is in the way each pope breaks free of boundaries for the sake of the Gospel, for Jesus gave the keys to each Peter to open access to the Kingdom of God, not to close it, and for each generation and each pontificate that will require a new kind of opening. Thus, he says, we find the true continuity between popes.
The final conversation between Francis and Martínez in this fascinating, at times moving, book touches on Francis’ own wishes. Among these are the reforms he is currently making to papal funerals (no lying-in-state with an open bier; popes are to be given the same funerals as anyone else). He also gives further details about his chosen resting place in the Basilica of St Mary Major, outside the Vatican, in the place where the slaves and poor of Rome were once buried. A reformer to the last, he has even chosen exactly where inside he wants the tomb to be: in a little room they currently use to store candelabras.
Javier Martínez-Brocal’s Papa Francisco: El Sucesor. Mis recuerdos de Benedicto XVI is published this week by Editorial Planeta.
Austen Ivereigh’s latest book is First Belong to God: On Retreat with Pope Francis (Messenger Publications).
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