Pope Benedict XVI DiesUpdates: In Last Testament, Benedict Asks Faithful to ‘Stay Steady’

  1. James Hill for The New York Times
  2. By Vatican Media
  3. Max Rossi/Reuters
  4. By Reuters
  5. Giampiero Sposito/Reuters
  6. By Reuters
  7. Mario Tama/Getty Images
  8. By Reuters
  9. Pool photo by Debbie Hill
  10. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
  11. L'Osservatore Romano

The first pope to step down in six centuries dies in retirement.

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The retired Pope Benedict XVI, left, with Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2020.Credit...Vatican Media, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Pope Benedict XVI, the eminent German theologian and conservative enforcer of Roman Catholic Church doctrine who broke with almost 600 years of tradition by resigning and then living for nearly a decade behind Vatican walls as a retired pope, died on Saturday at age 95, the Vatican said.

A pope’s death customarily sets in motion a conclave to choose a new leader of the church. But Benedict’s successor, Pope Francis, was named when Benedict stepped down in 2013.

In a traditional New Year’s Eve service held at the Vatican, Francis praised Benedict, saying, “With emotion, we remember his person, so noble, so kind. And we feel in our hearts so much gratitude.”

Now, a sitting pope is expected to preside over the funeral of his predecessor — an extraordinary spectacle in the history of the church. The Vatican said on Saturday that Benedict’s funeral would be held on Thursday in St. Peter’s Square, with Francis presiding.

As is traditional, Benedict’s body will be laid in St. Peter’s Basilica on Monday so that the faithful can file by to pay their respects.

Just like his predecessor, John Paul II, Benedict left behind a spiritual testament apologizing to “anyone I have wronged in any way.”

He thanked his father, for his “lucid faith” that taught his children to believe; his brother, also a priest, for his judgment and guidance; and his sister, who took care of him for decades.

And he called on the faithful to “Stay steady in the faith.”

He was a pope who always drew ardent loyalists, as well as strong detractors.

Even before his election as pope on April 19, 2005, church conservatives saw him as their intellectual and spiritual north star, a leader who, as a powerful Vatican official, upheld church doctrine in the face of growing secularism and pressure to change to get more people into the pews.

Benedict’s critics are more likely to remember him as a crusher of dissent who did far too little to address sexual abuse in the church, stumbled in some of his public declarations and lacked the charisma of his predecessor, John Paul II.

Francis fired or demoted many of Benedict’s appointees, redirected the church’s priorities and adjusted its emphasis from setting and keeping boundaries to pastoral inclusivity.

Still, in some regards, Francis has built on Benedict’s legacy, especially in addressing the child sexual abuse crisis. Benedict was the first pope to meet with victims, and he apologized for the abuse that was allowed to fester under John Paul II. He excoriated the “filth” in the church and excommunicated some offending priests.

But abuse survivors and their advocates accused Benedict of not going far enough in punishing several priests as a bishop in Germany, and in his handling of accusations against some priests as head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office. He was also criticized as doing little to hold the hierarchy accountable for shielding — and so facilitating — child sexual abuse.

Benedict, born Joseph Alois Ratzinger, was ordained a priest in 1951, and named archbishop of Munich and Freising in 1977, the same year that he became a cardinal. Four years later, Pope John Paul II summoned Cardinal Ratzinger to Rome, where he became the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office responsible for defending church orthodoxy, one of the Vatican’s most important positions. He led the office for nearly 25 years.

After John Paul II died in 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger was chosen as his successor. He took the name of a sixth-century monk, Benedict of Nurcia, who had founded monasteries and the Benedictine order, helping spread Christianity in Europe. The new pope, as Benedict XVI, would seek to re-evangelize a Europe that was struggling to maintain its faith.

Ultimately, Pope Benedict bowed out during a period of scandals and immense pressures. He cited his declining health, both “of mind and body.” He had said that he had resigned freely, and “for the good of the church.”

That resignation — the first by a pontiff since 1415 — is likely to be remembered as his most defining act.

He lived in retirement in a monastery on the Vatican grounds, mostly stepping back from public life and dedicating himself to prayer and meditation. Francis visited him and called him “a wise grandfather in the home,” even as his supporters sought — and failed — to make him an alternative power center.

Benedict’s funeral will take place in St. Peter’s Square.

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St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. Pope Benedict will be buried in the crypt beneath the church.Credit...Andrew Medichini/Associated Press

ROME — When Queen Elizabeth II of Britain died in September, a meticulously choreographed process known as Operation London Bridge was set in motion for the hours and days to follow. Papal deaths also follow a strict protocol: The pope’s study and bedroom are closed off, the pope’s Fisherman’s Ring — the seal used for papal documents — is destroyed, and various funeral rites are enacted.

But with the death of Benedict, who resigned from the papacy in 2013 and took the title of pope emeritus, it was unclear until his death was announced on Saturday what protocol the Vatican would use.

The Vatican said that his funeral would be held on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square, presided over by Pope Francis. Benedict will be buried alongside his 148 predecessors who lie in the Vatican Grottoes beneath St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican said.

Matteo Bruni, a Vatican spokesman, said that the rite on Thursday would be a “solemn but sober funeral.” Two official delegations will be present, according to the Vatican: those of Germany and Italy.

Leading up to that ceremony, his remains will stay until early Monday at Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, which had been his home on the grounds of Vatican City.

No official visits or public prayers are planned for that site. But on Monday, his remains will be laid to rest in St. Peter’s Basilica, where they can be “greeted by the faithful,” the Vatican said.

Because there are no precedents in modern time, said Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, a historian of the papacy, the question about how to handle the funeral of a retired pope was “complicated.” Benedict was not the first pope to retire, he noted, but he chose to retain some trappings tied to the papacy, including dressing in white.

By contrast, Celestine V, who resigned in 1294, sought to live like a monk. He was instead imprisoned by Pope Boniface VIII and was not given the funeral of a pope when he died in 1296.

Gregory XII, the last pope to resign before Benedict, reverted to being a cardinal when he stepped down in 1415. When he died two years later, his funeral followed the rite used for cardinals, Mr. Paravicini Bagliani said.

Normally, cardinals gather for papal funerals to mourn, but also to participate in the election of a successor. Their presence in Rome is a “sign that even though a pope has died, the church continues,” Mr. Paravicini Bagliani explained.

“Clearly that’s not an issue in this case,” he said, but added that cardinals would likely be present “as mourners.”

A pope’s funeral Mass is usually celebrated by the dean of the College of Cardinals. As such, Benedict celebrated the funeral of John Paul II in 2005.

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Arrangements begin for Benedict’s funeral.

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Visitors took photos of St. Peter’s Square and Basilica in Vatican City on Saturday. At least 60,000 were expected to visit Rome for the funeral of Benedict XVI.Credit...Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters

At least 60,000 people were expected for the funeral of pope emeritus Benedict XVI on Jan. 5, and around 30,000 were expected to visit St. Peter’s Basilica on each of the three days that the pope emeritus’s body would lie in wake there, according to a security official for the city of Rome.

By contrast, hundreds of thousands participated in the funeral in 2005 of Pope John Paul, whose papacy lasted 27 years to Benedict’s eight. An estimated two million people filed past John Paul’s bier in St. Peter’s basilica, amid a one-week surge of pilgrims that Italian officials estimated at three million or more.

The airspace over St. Peter’s will be closed during Thursday’s ceremony and at least 1,000 police officers will be deployed, the security official, Bruno Frattasi said. Volunteers with the national civil protection agency will also provide assistance to those participating in the funeral and ambulances will be on hand, he added.

Rome’s public transportation system will also be adjusting to handle more passengers.

The decisions were made Saturday at a meeting of a security and order committee for the province of Rome. Other logistics — including how to move people wishing to pay their last respects through the basilica — were also discussed.

The committee is expected to meet again ahead of the funeral to fine tune details.

Matteo Bruni, a Vatican spokesman, said Saturday that in keeping with Benedict’s wishes, the funeral would be “marked by simplicity.”

The Vatican said that delegations of officials from Germany and of Italy would be present.

Benedict was criticized for his handling of the church’s sex abuse scandal.

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Pope Benedict XVI, left, at a Mass in Sydney, Australia, in 2008, apologized to victims of child sexual abuse by clergy in that country.Credit...Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press

The clerical sex abuse scandal broke under Pope John Paul II in the years that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — who would later become Pope Benedict XVI — headed the Vatican’s doctrinal office, which handled the cases of priests accused of abusing children.

Presented with case files, Cardinal Ratzinger sometimes set disciplinary measures in motion, even having accused priests defrocked. But other times, the record shows, he took the side of the accused priests and failed to listen to the victims or their warnings that an abuser could violate more young people.

When Cardinal Ratzinger became pope, the scandal exploded publicly throughout the global church. It continues to reverberate, causing some to lose faith and presenting challenges for the church’s current leadership.

During his time as pope, Benedict’s efforts to rid the church of what he called “filth” went further than those of John Paul II, but he was reluctant to hold bishops accountable for shuffling abusive priests from assignment to assignment, angering survivors and advocates.

Benedict himself was swept up in the scandal after the release of a report in January 2022 that had been commissioned by the Roman Catholic Church in Munich to investigate the archdiocese’s handling of sexual abuse from 1945 to 2019.

The report claimed that Benedict had mishandled four cases decades earlier involving the sexual abuse of minors while he was an archbishop in Germany. It also accused him of having misled investigators in his written answers.

Two weeks after the report was released, Benedict acknowledged that “abuses and errors” had been made. He asked for forgiveness but denied any misconduct.

Survivors and victims groups said they have mixed feelings about his legacy.

“Ratzinger was less communicative than Francis but he moved” in the right direction, when it came to confronting the clerical abuse scandal, the first pope to really do so, said Francesco Zanardi, the founder of Rete l’Abuso, the largest victims group in Italy. That said, “the real challenge is changing the culture of individual bishops, and that can be enormous.”

Anne Barrett Doyle, a co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a victims advocacy and research group, said in a statement that Benedict would be “remembered chiefly for his failure to achieve what should have been his job one: to rectify the incalculable harm done to the hundreds of thousands of children sexually abused by Catholic priests.”

When he resigned, Benedict “left hundreds of culpable bishops in power and a culture of secrecy intact,” she said.

“Instead of remedies, he gave us words,” Ms. Barrett Doyle said. “His failure to enact real change in the church’s handling of sexually abusive priests will be his significant and shameful legacy.”

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, also gave its assessment of how Benedict dealt with clerical abuse.

“In our view, the death of Pope Benedict XVI is a reminder that, much like John Paul II, Benedict was more concerned about the church’s deteriorating image and financial flow to the hierarchy versus grasping the concept of true apologies followed by true amends to victims of abuse,” SNAP said in a statement on Saturday.

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In his spiritual will, Benedict offers final thoughts on faith.

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Benedict XVI waving to a crowd from inside the popemobile in Rome in 2009.Credit...Pier Paolo Cito/Associated Press

In his final spiritual testament, released by the Vatican on Saturday evening, Benedict XVI urged resistance to secularism and reflected upon his life, saying he had many reasons to be thankful for God’s guidance through the moments of confusion.

“Retrospectively, I see and understand that even the dark and tiresome traits of this journey were for my salvation and, right in those, He led me well,” Benedict wrote, referring to God.

Echoing wording in the spiritual will of his predecessor, John Paul II, Benedict apologized to “anyone I have wronged in any way” and said “to all those whom, in some way, I was unfair, I heartily seek forgiveness.”

He also made a last plea to his followers, urging them to “stay steady in the faith” and wrote that, despite advancements in science and changes in societal views, he was certain that “the rationality of faith has and will emerge again.”

Benedict, who as pope had warned against the trend toward secularism in the West, wrote, “I pray that our land remains a land of faith and beg you, dear compatriots, do not be distracted from the faith.”

He thanked his father for his “lucid faith” that taught his children to believe; his mother, for her “deep devotion and great goodness;” his sister, who took care of him for decades; and his brother, also a priest, for his judgment and guidance.

Benedict also thanked his friends, collaborators, students, his Bavarian homeland and his adopted home in Rome and Italy.

“I finally ask you, please pray for me,” he said. “Despite all my sins and insufficiencies, may he welcome me in the eternal dwellings.”

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Caterina Walis, center, her son Franciszek and her daughter Maria Teresa made their way to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City after the death of Benedict XVI on Saturday.Credit...Emma Bubola/The New York Times

St. Peter’s Square on Saturday appeared as it did most weekends, with tourists taking selfies and the faithful entering the basilica — this time, for the last celebration of the year.

Still, a few mourners made their way through the crowd to cross themselves in front of the basilica, in honor of Benedict XVI.

“There is a huge void,” said Caterina Walis, 61, a housewife who had walked to the square to say her goodbyes to Benedict with teary eyes. “We loved him so much.”

She had been praying for him that morning before hearing that he had died, as she had prayed in the past days since learning that he was unwell.

Like many other conservative Roman Catholics, Ms. Walis said that Benedict had been a reference point for her, a custodian of the church’s aims amid the threats of modernity. She shared fond memories of kissing Benedict’s hands in St. Sabina basilica in Rome in the first years of his papacy, and of reading some of his writings and thinking, “Mamma Mia.” She said, “It was almost a miracle.”

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Ms. Walis kisses the hand of Benedict in Rome, early in his papacy.Credit...Emma Bubola/The New York Times

Her daughter, Maria Teresa Walis, 31, a practicing lawyer, said she felt sad that the church now had only one living pope after a decade in which the retired Benedict remained on the sidelines while Pope Francis served as pope.

“We had two of them and it was an extra richness,” Ms. Walis said. “It is the end of an era.”

Others in Rome wondered how that dynamic would affect the mourning of Benedict.

Chiara Darida, 73, a retired schoolteacher who was outside St. Peter’s Square, recalled the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005. On that occasion, she noted, the city of Rome was “blocked,” and her work appointments postponed, as mourners from his native Poland and heads of state from around the world came for the funeral.

“I hope they will come this time, too,” she said.

Sister Priscila Danieli Da Silva, a student of choir direction in sacred music, said a pope celebrating the funeral of another pope was an example of the changing church.

“It’s a total novelty,” she said.

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Biden and Pelosi pay homage to Pope Benedict XVI.

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President Biden is Catholic, but has had a rocky relationship with the church’s conservative wing.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

CHRISTIANSTED, V.I. — President Biden praised former Pope Benedict XVI for his “generosity” on Saturday, joining other American Catholics in mourning the former pontiff.

Mr. Biden is the second Catholic president, along with John F. Kennedy, but has had a rocky relationship with the church’s conservative wing, largely over the president’s support for abortion rights. He visited the Vatican in 2021 while attending a summit in Rome and had an extended audience with Pope Francis.

On Saturday, during a vacation in St. Croix, Mr. Biden had no public appearances but issued a statement honoring the former pope.

“Jill and I join Catholics around the world, and so many others, in mourning the passing of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI,” he said, adding, “He will be remembered as a renowned theologian, with a lifetime of devotion to the church, guided by his principles and faith.”

Mr. Biden remembered Benedict’s comments during a 2008 visit to the United States and White House, where the pope noted that the “need for global solidarity is as urgent as ever, if all people are to live in a way worthy of their dignity.”

“May his focus on the ministry of charity continue to be an inspiration to us all,” Biden said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat of California who is also Catholic, released a statement Saturday that expressed her admiration of Benedict’s spirituality and recalled welcoming the pope to Washington in 2008 and visiting him at the Vatican the next year.

“Paul and I join our fellow Catholics in mourning the passing of Pope Benedict XVI: a global leader whose devotion, scholarship and hopeful message stirred the hearts of people of all faiths,” she wrote in the statement, referring to her husband.

Some conservative American Catholic bishops and priests have called for Mr. Biden and Ms. Pelosi to be denied communion when they attend Mass because of their stance on abortion and rights for L.G.B.T.Q. people. But neither Benedict nor his successor, Pope Francis, has endorsed such a punitive move.

Ms. Pelosi previously told The Times that she has a folder in her office with photos and news clips memorializing her encounters with popes, dating back to a visit to Rome with her family in the 1950s to visit Pope Pius XII, a sign of her commitment to her faith and reverence for the papacy. Her father, Thomas J. D’Alesandro Jr., a former mayor of Baltimore and member of the House, was also prominent in the American Catholic community.

However, Ms. Pelosi has publicly disagreed with the church’s stance on abortion, which along with family planning access and women’s rights is a core value for her party.

“The church has their position, and we have ours, which is that a woman has free will given to her by God. My family is very pro-life,” she told The Times in 2015.

From Rome to Moscow, presidents and church leaders pay their respects.

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President Sergio Mattarella of Italy paid tribute to Benedict XVI as an intellectual and theologian.Credit...Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Leaders from Italy, elsewhere in Europe and the Russian Orthodox Church paid tribute to Benedict XVI on Saturday, citing his traditional morals and his dedication to the Roman Catholic Church.

Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox leader who met with Benedict several times during his papacy, cited the retired pope’s “unquestionable authority as an eminent theologian,” which Kirill said “allowed him to make a significant contribution to the development of inter-Christian cooperation, to the witness of Christ in a secularized world and to the defense of traditional morals.”

Kirill said in a statement published on the website of the Moscow Patriarchy on Saturday that Benedict had been an admirer and friend of Eastern Christianity.

In Italy, President Sergio Mattarella said that Benedict XVI would be “unforgettable” for the Italian people. “His sweetness and wisdom have benefited our community and the entire international community,” Mr. Mattarella said in a statement.

He called the late pope an intellectual and theologian who “interpreted with finesse the reasons of dialogue, peace, dignity of the person as supreme interests for religions.”

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, expressed her personal mourning for Benedict and that of the Italian government. She called him a “giant of faith and religion,” and, in a statement, stressed Benedict’s service to the church and the “spiritual, cultural and intellectual depth of his teaching.”

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive arm — who, like Benedict, is from Germany — expressed sympathy to all Catholics over the retired pope’s death.

“Pope Benedict’s passing saddens me,” she said on Twitter. “He had set a strong signal through his resignation,” she wrote, adding, “Once his physical strength waned, he continued to serve through the power of his prayers.”

Within Germany, the response was more nuanced. Tributes to his service to the church were mixed with acknowledgments of criticism of his handling of sexual abuse cases as an archbishop.

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Locals in a neighborhood near the Vatican recount memories of Benedict.

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Antonello Fulvimari, the owner of Al Passetto Restaurant in Rome, recalled Benedict XVI’s love for Italian cuisine.Credit...Emma Bubola/The New York Times

ROME — At the Al Passetto di Borgo restaurant, where Benedict used to eat before he became pope, the cooks in white aprons listened somberly to the news about his death as they got ready for the New Year’s Eve dinner shift.

“He was a special person to me,” said Antonello Fulvimari, the owner of the decades-old restaurant, a mainstay among Vatican clerics. As he sat amid walls decorated with pictures of cardinals and bishops who had dined there, Mr. Fulvimari said Benedict often came, sat wherever he found space and sampled the whole menu. He loved Italian cuisine, he said.

“His favorite was spaghetti alla carbonara,” he said. Benedict often came with his brother and his sister and doted on the restaurant owner’s dog, Billy. According to a framed clip from the Italian magazine Gente, hung on the restaurant’s wall, Mr. Fulvimari’s restaurant was one of the places where Vatican cardinals gathered to discuss electing Benedict as pope in 2005.

On Borgo Pio street, near where Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger used to live before he became pope, Mr. Fulvimari and other locals shared fond memories of him.

Angela Bernardini, a shopkeeper at a store selling religious objects, said that she used to say hello to Pope Benedict when he was still a cardinal and strolled by with a polite, shy smile. “We will miss him,” she said, “he was very dear to us here.”

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Angela Bernardini, who sells religious objects at a shop near the Vatican, used to see Pope Benedict when he was still a cardinal and lived nearby.Credit...Emma Bubola/The New York Times

American Catholics react to the death of Pope Benedict XVI.

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Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in 1977.Credit...Bettmann/Getty Images

The death of Benedict XVI on Saturday prompted strong reactions from American Catholics — from those who revered him as a master theologian and guardian of church doctrine, to those who criticized his response to the church’s sexual abuse crisis, and his approach to L.G.B.T.Q. people.

At the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, a single bell tolled for 15 minutes at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart to mark Benedict’s death. Cardinals and bishops around the country released statements of praise and mourning for the man many regarded as the guiding star for the conservative wing of the U.S. church.

“The human family grieves the passing of this erudite, wise and holy man, who spoke the truth with love,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who was promoted under Benedict.

In Detroit, Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, who was appointed by Benedict, said that “While his many gifts have long been evident — his penetrating intellect, his piety, his courage — what most resonates with me now is his profound humility and the gentleness with which he exercised his ministry.”

Cardinal Sean P. O‘Malley of Boston, also elevated to his position by Benedict, recounted the pope’s commitment to the church mission, and added simply, “I will miss Pope Benedict.”

Yet for survivors of the church’s sexual abuse scandal and their supporters, Benedict’s leadership was far more mixed.

In a statement Saturday, The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, criticized Benedict for being more concerned with the church’s image and finances than he was with making amends to abuse victims.

“It is past time for the Vatican to refocus on change, tell the truth about known abusive clergy, protect children and adults, and allow justice to those who have been hurt,” the statement said. “Honoring Pope Benedict XVI now is not only wrong. It is shameful.”

L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics said the former pope’s objections to marriage equality and to L.G.B.T.Q. people raising children were painful and damaging.

Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of DignityUSA, an organization of Catholics that lobbies for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, said that the former pope’s passing marked “what is, hopefully, the end of a long, painful era for LGBTQIA+ Catholics, our families, and the entire church.”

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His resignation as pope in 2013 shocked the world.

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Pope Benedict XVI blessing the faithful in 2013, at the end of his last weekly audience at St Peter’s Square.Credit...Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ROME — When Benedict XVI resigned in 2013, he was the first pope to do so in six centuries, and the move sent shock waves around the world.

Benedict announced the decision in Latin during a routine gathering of cardinals, telling them that after much thought, “I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise” of leading the world’s one billion Roman Catholics.

He told the cardinals that, at age 85, he did not have the strength, either of mind or body, to “adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.”

Benedict had been showing signs of age, often appeared tired and used a wheeled platform to move around.

His papacy had also been roiled by fresh revelations of clerical abuse of minors in various dioceses around the world, and Benedict had struggled to respond to growing criticism.

After Benedict’s resignation, he moved into the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery on the grounds of Vatican City, where he said he would devote his life to meditation and prayer. He was cared for by four laywomen who had taken vows in the Catholic movement known as Communion and Liberation, as well as by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the German monsignor who was his private secretary throughout his pontificate.

With two living popes for the first time in the modern era, the Vatican was forced to navigate a series of unknowns, including where to house two popes at the Vatican and what to call Benedict. The decision was made for Benedict to adopt the title of “pope emeritus” and continue to wear white.

The previous pope to resign, Pope Gregory XII, stepped down in 1415, in an attempt to quell a leadership crisis in the church known as the Great Western Schism, during which three men vied to be pope.

An unusual coexistence of two popes worked out, mostly.

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Pope Benedict attended a Mass in 2015 to begin the Roman Catholic Church’s Holy Year, or Jubilee.Credit...Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press

When he resigned in 2013, Benedict pledged that he would live “hidden to the world,” retiring, he said, “to a life of prayer” and meditation.

He moved into a monastery with a view of St. Peter’s dome, and for the most part adhered to that promise, spending his days secluded not far from Pope Francis’s own residence on the Vatican’s grounds.

Benedict’s public appearances were rare. In 2015, with Pope Francis, he marked the opening of a Jubilee, or Holy Year, and at least in the early years of his retirement he attended the occasional special Mass or ceremony for elevating a cardinal.

In an interview in April, on the occasion of Benedict’s 95th birthday, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, his longtime personal secretary, told Vatican News, a Vatican-controlled outlet, that the retired pope was in “good spirits.”

Although he was “physically relatively weak and frail,” Benedict remained “lucid,” the archbishop said, describing a life of reading, dealing with correspondence and meeting with visitors. The retired pope also went out into the Vatican gardens, reciting the rosary, “but seated,” the archbishop said.

But even though he remained out of the public eye, more than once Benedict found himself at the center of media maelstroms and was often regarded as a foil against Francis by the sitting pope’s detractors.

In 2019, Benedict broke his post-papacy silence, issuing a 6,000-word letter that seemed at odds with his successor’s view of the church’s sexual abuse scandals. Benedict attributed the crisis to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, secularization and an erosion of morality that he pinned on liberal theology. Francis, by contrast, saw its origins in the exaltation of authority and abuse of power in the church hierarchy.

Given Benedict’s frail health at the time, however, many church watchers questioned whether he had indeed written the letter or had been manipulated to issue it as a way to undercut Francis.

And as Francis appeared to be mulling whether to lift the restriction on married priests in remote areas, as had been proposed by his bishops, Benedict firmly defended the church’s teachings on priestly celibacy in a 2020 book. Francis ended up rejecting the proposal, a decision welcomed by conservatives.

At times, Benedict also scolded the cardinals who invoked his name as they criticized Francis. In private letters published in 2018 by the German newspaper Bild, Benedict wrote that the “anger” expressed by some of his staunchest defenders risked tarnishing his own pontificate.

“I can well understand the deep-seated pain that the end of my pontificate caused you and many others,” he wrote in a November 2017 letter to Cardinal Walter Brandmüller of Germany. “But for some — and it seems to me for you as well — the pain has turned to anger, which no longer just affects the abdication but my person and the entirety of my pontificate.”

Benedict added, “In this way the pontificate itself is being devalued and conflated with the sadness about the situation of the church today.”

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Mourning bells ring across Germany, but some of the tributes come with caveats.

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A photo of Benedict XVI was displayed during a service in the Cathedral Church of Our Lady in Munich on Saturday.Credit...Lennart Preiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Church bells rang across Germany on Saturday as leaders around the country paid their respects to Benedict XVI — the first German to be pope in nearly a millennium, but whose legacy in his country of birth is contested.

“As a ‘German’ pope, Benedict XVI was a special church leader for many, not only in this country,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a statement on Twitter. “The world loses a formative figure of the Catholic Church, a combative personality and a wise theologian. My thoughts are with Pope Francis.”

In Munich, the archbishop, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, offered a prayer in Benedict’s honor. “Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is dead and we mourn him: He put his trust in You, he lived with You, he sought You. Lead him now to eternal life and grant him the joy of the resurrection.”

Born in 1927 as Josef Ratzinger, in the Bavarian village of Marktl am Inn, the future Benedict XVI grew up during World War II and was enrolled in the Hitler Youth as a teenager, as was compulsory at the time. But it was not his years under Nazi rule — which took a course largely common to German men of his generation — so much as his role in handling sexual abuse scandals in the church that has dogged his legacy in Germany.

Early in 2022, the retired pope, who resigned as the leader of the global Catholic Church in 2013, admitted to providing false information to a German inquiry into clerical sexual abuse, while strongly denying any misconduct or intent to mislead on his part.

In a written statement to the inquiry, he said he did not recall attending a meeting with local officials in 1980 to discuss a priest suspected of pedophilia. Yet Benedict changed that position days after reports came out accusing him during his time as archbishop of Munich, from 1977 to 1982, of mishandling the cases of four priests accused of child sexual abuse. The reports said his denial of being at the meeting lacked credibility.

In response, Benedict asked forgiveness for “abuses and errors” under his watch, but said that the discrepancy in his testimony was an honest mistake introduced during editing.

The chairman of the Catholic German Bishops’ Conference, Georg Bätzing, on Saturday described Benedict as an “impressive theologian” and “experienced shepherd.” But Bishop Bätzing also acknowledged the problems in Benedict’s handling of abuse cases as an archbishop. “He asked forgiveness from those affected, and yet questions remained unanswered,” the bishop said.

Germany’s largely ceremonial president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, issued a statement paying tribute to Benedict, citing in particular his ability to make his religious teachings accessible to all faiths. Mr. Steinmeier, too, raised the topic of sexual abuse in the church.

Benedict “was confronted with the oppressive problem of worldwide sexual abuse and its systematic cover-up,” the president wrote. “Here he had a special responsibility. Benedict knew about the great suffering of the victims and the immense damage to the credibility of the Church.”

On social media, the dean of Cologne’s cathedral posted videos of “Fat Pete,” the church’s largest bell, pealing in honor of Benedict. From Munich, clerics released video of the funerary bell ringing at the church of St. Michael. And across Bavaria, Benedict’s largely Catholic home state, local leaders and state parties mourned his passing.

“We mourn the death of our Bavarian pope,” said Markus Söder, the governor, adding: “With him, society loses a convincing representative of the Catholic Church and one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century.”

“He gave strength and orientation to many people,” Mr. Söder said. “At the same time, however, he also had to face the responsibility for difficult phases in his ministry.”

In Berlin, Germany’s Parliament announced that mourning flags would be hung from the parliamentary building, noting in a statement that Benedict had come there as a guest 11 years ago. “Never before had a pope spoken before an elected German Parliament,” the statement said.

In the German news media, some riffed on a famous headline from the country’s largest daily, Bild, which in 2005 greeted Benedict’s elevation with the words “We are pope!” On Saturday, at least two news outlets offered a variation: “We were pope.”

At 86, Francis has his own health problems, raising questions about whether he, too, might retire.

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Pope Francis used a wheelchair to leave his weekly general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday.Credit...Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press

The death of Benedict XVI has once again focused attention on the health of Francis, himself 86 and considerably slowed. Francis now often uses a wheelchair. He’s heavier and breathes more heavily.

Francis has made aging, and concern about the abandonment of the aged, a hallmark of his late papacy, using his own deteriorating body, as John Paul II did, as a testament to the suffering of an increasing population of older people.

Francis, who had part of a lung removed when he was 21, underwent surgery in the summer of 2021 to remove part of his colon, which kept him hospitalized for 10 days. He suffers from sciatica, a chronic nerve condition that causes, back, hip and leg pain, giving him a limp. Francis has called it his “troublesome guest.”

He has also attributed his limp to a flat foot. “When you see me walking like a broody chicken, it’s because of that affliction,” he told Nelson Castro, the author of the book “The Health of Popes.”

Knee pain forced him to postpone a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan in July, though, in a possible sign of improvement, he is now scheduled to make that trip in February. On a trip to Canada in July, during which he used a wheelchair, he acknowledged that he would have to restrict his usually frantic schedule on international trips.

Francis has spoken freely about his physiotherapy to address the narrowing of a disc between his fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae. Various treatments have apparently improved his mobility, as instead of relying on a wheelchair, he used a cane and leaned on two aides after delivering the annual “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and to the World”) speech on Christmas.

Francis is the oldest reigning pope in more than a century, and his age and ailments have prompted questions about whether he himself will retire. He has consistently said that stepping down is an idea he would entertain if he felt he could no longer do the job, and he recently revealed that he had signed a resignation document in the event that he became incapacitated or unable to do the job.

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Benedict’s life in pictures.

Credit...Clockwise from top left: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times, Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, L’Osservatore Romano, and Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times

A soft-spoken intellectual and scholar, Benedict XVI was the head of the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics for eight years, sandwiched between the charismatic Pope (now Saint) John Paul II (1978-2005), one of the longest papacies in history, and the reformist agenda of Pope Francis, who began serving in 2013.

As a younger cleric, Benedict, born Joseph Ratzinger, experienced the opening of the Catholic Church to the modern world that was set in motion by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which he attended as a theological adviser.

As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s theological watchdog, he embraced orthodoxy, moving against dissenting theologians and speaking out against homosexuality, birth control and abortion, and the liberation theology movement in Latin America.

As pope, he witnessed the growing secularization of society, alongside growing disenchantment among the faithful with an institution seen as being unwilling, or unable, to give a forceful response to the clerical abuse scandal that has roiled the church in the past few decades.

Here is a selection of images from Benedict’s life.

Benedict, in retirement, often resisted being used by Catholic conservatives to undercut Francis.

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Benedict, left, meeting with Francis in Vatican City in 2015.Credit...Osservatore Romano, via EPA/Shutterstock

As Pope Francis opened core issues of church doctrine and teachings to debate, aghast church conservatives looked in vain to Benedict XVI, the retired pope in the Vatican Gardens, for leadership, or at least tacit support.

For many church traditionalists — and also right-wing political populists — Benedict, an enforcer of orthodoxy and keeper of traditional values, remained the real moral authority. They sought to draw him into an internecine ideological war within the church, but he kept his distance and mostly kept quiet, upholding his vow to remain hidden from the world.

Francis told priests and bishops to be welcoming to Catholics who had divorced and remarried. He said of gay priests, “Who am I to judge?” And he voiced openness to same-sex marriage and the ordination of a limited number of married men as priests, though he later rejected both notions. He restricted the use of the old Latin Mass, reached out to the Muslim world and struck a deal with Beijing, recognizing bishops appointed by the Chinese government.

Each move angered conservatives, who sought to undercut Francis and make Benedict the touchstone of their opposition, fueling fears that having two living popes could promote a schism.

Benedict had in a certain sense created the problem, keeping the title, if not power, as pope emeritus, and his white robes. But he did not appreciate being a papal football, and at times scolded the cardinals leading the charge against Francis for invoking his name.

When Benedict did seem to weigh in, as in a 2019 essay attributing sexual abuse in the church to the permissive culture of the swinging ’60s, it was when he had already grown extremely frail.

The conservative movement, and resistance to Francis, is still strong and well-funded, especially in the American church, which has made a habit of blatantly opposing him. But the death of Benedict, 17 years after that of John Paul II, has left the church’s traditionalists without an obvious leader and figurehead.

As Francis continues to appoint bishops and elevate clerics with a worldview similar to his own, and as he packs the College of Cardinals that will select his successor when he dies — or resigns — it appears increasingly unlikely that a pope in the model of Benedict will turn the church back around anytime soon.

Yet Vatican politics and church coalition-building are complicated and unpredictable. Many conservatives thought Francis would be one of them.

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