From Pewsitter:
No official transcript of the press conference is yet available, but Giuseppe Nardi, another well-known Vaticanist who was in attendance, says that Englisch continued his statements by describing Pope Francis as a “strong personality” who “gets what he wants,” and that he has little in common with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI but “uses him when necessary for the optics.” Englisch concluded his dramatic remarks with a remarkable statement: that, in addition to the pressure put upon the Pope Emeritus to resign, “different ecclesiastical forces” are putting pressure on Ratzinger in a different direction: “to return.”
PopeWatch would not be surprised if this is accurate. The policies of Pope Francis are probably anathema to the Pope Emeritus and as an intellectual the Pope Emeritus probably has considerable disdain for Pope Francis who manifestly is not. So why does the Pope Emeritus pretend that all is hunky-dory with his successor? Two possibilities come to mind. If he openly opposed his successor the Pope Emeritus would quickly create a schism, something which all Popes fear. Second, it is possible that if he was forced to resign the same forces that compelled him to resign may also be keeping him in line. This may seem far-fetched, but isn’t that precisely the term to paste on to what has been going on in the Vatican since Benedict’s resignation? Some very odd things have been afoot at the Vatican and ordinary Catholics have been kept deliberately in the dark.
“Ordinary Catholics have been…kept in the dark” before. It is now called Good Friday, and its evil confusion and feelings of betrayal were soon dispelled by the light of the Risen Christ on Easter. We “ordinary Catholics” shall always have that gift to weather the most diabolical of storms within God’s holy Church.
Amen DonL.
It is heartening that Benedict feels this way. It would be devastating if he didn’t.
Like everyone here, I too have tried to make sense of this account. I went back to look at some Deutsche.de sites, employing my journeyman German, to check his background, and he has good credentials as a correspondent with die Bild and die Bild am Sonntag. He has previously written about the impending explosion of the sexual abuse problem in Catholic Germany, and from 1995 on, often personally accompanied P JP2 on his airplane on the latter’s travels throughout his pontificate. At first a papal critic, he became an admirer of JP2 and wrote book on him entitled “JP2: The Secret of Karol Wojtyla”, as well as other pro-Catholic works. He is married (to a woman, no less 🙄 ) and has a son.
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But Englisch first came to major attention outside of Germany, predicting some months prior to his abdication that P BXVI was going to resign, the first to hint at the coming crisis.
So, it sounds like there is more fire to this smoke than originally expected.
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Plus, years in the Holy Office for P BXVI cant be a situation where he appreciates the complete doctrinal undoing of the Catholic Church that the Angry Red from Argentina is doing to the Church.