PopeWatch: Behind the Scenes

He just might have some documents to share with the faithful. Time will tell.

Meaning no disrespect to our blog authors, below is a testament from Pope Benedict XVI.
May God extend His Mercy and Kindness to this man of God in life everlasting.

Benedict’s Testament
January 1, 2023 by sd

From the Vatican:

My spiritual testament
Benedict XVI in prayer

When, at this late hour of my life, I look back on the decades I have wandered through, I see first of all how much reason I have to give thanks. Above all, I thank God Himself, the giver of all good gifts, who has given me life and guided me through all kinds of confusion; who has always picked me up when I began to slip, who has always given me anew the light of his countenance. In retrospect, I see and understand that even the dark and arduous stretches of this path were for my salvation and that He guided me well in those very stretches.

I thank my parents, who gave me life in difficult times and prepared a wonderful home for me with their love, which shines through all my days as a bright light until today. My father’s clear-sighted faith taught us brothers and sisters to believe and stood firm as a guide in the midst of all my scientific knowledge; my mother’s heartfelt piety and great kindness remain a legacy for which I cannot thank her enough. My sister has served me selflessly and full of kind concern for decades; my brother has always paved the way for me with the clear-sightedness of his judgements, with his powerful determination, and with the cheerfulness of his heart; without this ever-new going ahead and going along, I would not have been able to find the right path.

I thank God from the bottom of my heart for the many friends, men and women, whom He has always placed at my side; for the co-workers at all stages of my path; for the teachers and students He has given me. I gratefully entrust them all to His goodness. And I would like to thank the Lord for my beautiful home in the Bavarian foothills of the Alps, in which I was able to see the splendour of the Creator Himself shining through time and again. I thank the people of my homeland for allowing me to experience the beauty of faith time and again. I pray that our country will remain a country of faith and I ask you, dear compatriots, not to let your faith be distracted. Finally, I thank God for all the beauty I was able to experience during the various stages of my journey, but especially in Rome and in Italy, which has become my second home.

I ask for forgiveness from the bottom of my heart from all those whom I have wronged in some way.

What I said earlier of my compatriots, I now say to all who were entrusted to my service in the Church: Stand firm in the faith! Do not be confused! Often it seems as if science – on the one hand, the natural sciences; on the other, historical research (especially the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures) – has irrefutable insights to offer that are contrary to the Catholic faith. I have witnessed from times long past the changes in natural science and have seen how apparent certainties against the faith vanished, proving themselves not to be science but philosophical interpretations only apparently belonging to science – just as, moreover, it is in dialogue with the natural sciences that faith has learned to understand the limits of the scope of its affirmations and thus its own specificity. For 60 years now, I have accompanied the path of theology, especially biblical studies, and have seen seemingly unshakeable theses collapse with the changing generations, which turned out to be mere hypotheses: the liberal generation (Harnack, Jülicher, etc.), the existentialist generation (Bultmann, etc.), the Marxist generation. I have seen, and see, how, out of the tangle of hypotheses, the reasonableness of faith has emerged and is emerging anew. Jesus Christ is truly the Way, the Truth, and the Life – and the Church, in all her shortcomings, is truly His Body.

Finally, I humbly ask: pray for me, so that the Lord may admit me to the eternal dwellings, despite all my sins and shortcomings. For all those entrusted to me, my heartfelt prayer goes out day after day.

Benedictus PP XVI.

Fr. Zuhlsdorf, over at Fr. Z’s Blog, has posted about a recent interview given by Archbishop Ganswein. In it, the longtime aide to the Pope Emeritus said that reading Traditiones Custodes when it was released was a turning point for Benedict, and that it broke his heart.

Two things struck me about the Archbishop’s comment: Firstly, it makes it clear that no one in Francis’ coterie gave a damn about Benedict’s thoughts on the matter. Despite the fact that the Pope Emeritus had spent a great deal of thought and effort on the subject addressed, the authors of Traditiones Custodes * clearly never sought Benedict’s input nor advice, nor gave him the courtesy of a heads-up regarding a MP that would demolish one of Benedict’s great accomplishments — *Summorum Pontificum.

Secondly, the “mess of cruelty” as Fr. Zuhlsdorf
describes TC cannot be blamed in any way on Benedict. He had no hand in it. Rather, its gratuitous cruelty and falsity can only be laid at the feet of Francis his courtiers.

If Benedict left behind any written evidence of his true, unvarnished thoughts on this miserable pontificate, I hope it was entrusted to worthy hands. Otherwise, I would not put it past the crew running things now to consign anything inconvenient to the flames— or even substitute something of their own concoction.

I’m not one to imagine conspiracies everywhere, but with Francis’ pontificate it seems that just when you think he’s plumbed the depths of corruption, hypocrisy and pettiness, the man excavates a new sub-basement. If the Holy See releases any papers purporting to be Benedict’s, I would take them with several grains of salt.