VATICAN CITY
The Weekly Standard
Feb 25, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 23 • By JOSEPH BOTTUM
In 1294, Peter of Morrone—San Celestino, little St. Celestine, as popular devotion calls him—was elected pope of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. The Spirit moves where it will; perhaps a shy, ascetic monk was necessary at that moment, to remind the church of its truest calling. The college of cardinals thought so, at least, desperate after two years of failing to choose a successor to Nicholas IV.
Still, no one should have been surprised that a man who had previously lived as a hermit in a cave in Abruzzi would prove one of the least competent administrators the world has ever seen. He never actually made it to Rome, ruling—if the word is allowed a certain looseness—from Naples and attempting such governance practices as disappearing for the whole of Advent to fast and pray. After five months and eight days in office, the saint had simply had enough. Citing his desire for a purer life, his physical weakness, his ignorance, the perverseness of those around him, and a longing for tranquillity, he issued a papal decree that popes had the authority to leave their office, and then took advantage of his decree to resign the papacy and flee to a monastic retreat in the forest. …
In 2005, a devout and serious theologian named Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope, taking the name of Benedict XVI in honor of St. Benedict, one of the founders of Western monasticism and, in interesting ways, one of the founders of the West itself. At the time of his election, commentators made much of Ratzinger’s nod toward the Christian root of European self-understanding. They might have been better served by paying attention to his nod toward the monastic element—for in February 2013, Benedict XVI suddenly and inexplicably reaffirmed Celestine’s decree of papal authority to resign and announced his own resignation from the office, effective at the end of the month. He would, he informed the world, be spending the rest of his life in prayer, isolated within a monastery.
In certain ways, the decision is intelligent. For the rigors of an extremely public office, the 85-year-old pontiff is increasingly and recognizably unfit. Always something of an isolated figure, he was a man with few close advisers. “He never talked to anyone,” a Vatican official told me, “not really.” He seemed to have no friends who were also high officials in the church—no counselors who could understand the stresses of his position. Worse, his natural distaste for the glad-handing part of the job was a constant burden. John Paul II drew strength from crowds; they revived his spirit even in his infirm old age. Benedict saw and felt the press of people as a burden, necessary but uncongenial, and as the almost eight years of his papacy went by, one could see the endless papal audiences exhausting him more and more.
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