Without Benedict, Pope Francis is lonelier – and tensions could rise in Berlin’s Vatican Crazy scene on New Year’s Eve – man shoots nine times in the air during a TV interview

Since the spectacular resignation of Benedict XVI. on February 28, 2013 – the first resignation of a pope in more than 600 years – there was repeated speculation whether that would work out, with two popes in the Vatican, and then two very different ones. Even the danger of a possible schism, a schism, was occasionally mooted.

And indeed, in the nearly decade of “cohabitation” there has been no lack of attempts to play and exploit the retired Benedict – an icon of conservatives and traditionalists – against the reformer and alleged heretic Francis.

The dualism with the two popes, who lived only a hundred meters apart in the Vatican – Francis in the boarding house Santa Marta, Benedict in the small convent of Mater Ecclesiae – destabilizes Francis’s pontificate, or at least has the potential to to do so, many Vatican experts believed. The unusual situation is a burden on the sitting pope.

The opposite is true. At least, that is the belief of publicist and former diplomat Massimo Franco, one of Italy’s top experts on internal Vatican affairs. Benedict, Franco wrote in the Corriere della Sera on Monday, was rather a stronghold for Francis, a kind of protective shield against his opponents – because his predecessor did not allow himself to be pulled over by the conservatives.

A burden for the pontificate

At the same time, the presence of the pastor emeritus in the Vatican also posed an obstacle for the “progressives”, for whom Francis’s reforms go too little far and too little fast. “There was a tacit pact between the predecessor and his successor that prevented exaggeration anyway, in the name of ecclesiastical unity.”writes Franco. Francis has become lonelier now with Benedict’s death; tensions between the traditionalists and the reformers in the Curia could now come to a head and strain the pontificate.

Franco also reports on one of his face-to-face meetings with Benedict in the Vatican Gardens in the spring of 2018. At the time, the pope emeritus stated with “joyful amazement” that the two popes lived together smoothly. “It wasn’t obvious, it was almost a miracle. But we love each other», Franco quotes the former pope. Francis was also the first to rush to the Mater Ecclesiae monastery to pray with his late predecessor after news of Benedict’s death.

Francis now also abdicates?

And something else changes with the death of the predecessor: Francis could now also resign his position at some point. Theoretically, he could have done that sooner, but then the Church would have had three popes instead of two, which would probably have been a bit too much. Jorge Mario Bergoglio did not want that, and the prospect of such a situation was an important reason why, as he himself said, he had never seriously considered the question of dismissal.

At the same time, however, Francis also stressed that Benedict’s resignation had “opened a door” through which other popes could now step in. And Francis certainly thought of himself: at 86, he is now a year older than Benedict at the time of his discharge.

Benedict’s five-day farewell ceremony is now in full swing in Rome. On Monday, the body of the pope emeritus was taken from the Mater Ecclesiae monastery to St. Peter’s Basilica and laid to rest in a private ceremony. Already at dawn, a long line of people formed on St. Peter’s Square who wanted to say goodbye to the former pope in person.

On Thursday, Francis will personally lead Benedict’s funeral mass in St. Peter’s Square. In the history of the Catholic Church, which is more than two thousand years old, this is a unique event: never before has a sitting pope performed the requiem for his predecessor – for the simple reason that after the death of a pope, a new pope usually has to be elected in a conclave. This time it is not necessary. After the Requiem Mass, Benedict is buried in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica, where most of the popes are buried.