Accidents along the way, from Regensburg to Vatileaks – Politics

From the Regensburg lecture to the Vatileaks case, from the ‘rehabilitation’ of a negationist bishop to the ‘denied’ intervention at La Sapienza University, the almost eight years of Benedict XVI’s pontificate, up to his historic resignation, coincided with a period of strong turbulence for the Church, crisis in external relations, due in part to some mishaps that marked the permanence of the German Pope on the throne of Peter.
The same strenuous fight against the scourge of pedophilia, the “zero tolerance” ordered with merit by pope Ratzinger, from a media point of view was paradoxically almost a double-edged sword, with the abuse scandal spreading to such levels almost overwhelm the image of the Church in the world.
THE SPEECH IN REGENSBON – The lectio magistralis given by Benedict XVI on September 12, 2006 at the University of Regensburg during his trip to Bavaria was seen as a dangerous ‘gaffe’ (although re-evaluated by many in subsequent years).
The quotation of a phrase of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus about the holy war – “Show me what Mohammed has brought new, and you will find there only bad and inhumane things, such as his directive to spread by the sword the faith that he preached” – provoked violent reactions in the Islamic world because it was considered offensive, with massive street protests. Subsequently the Pope, during an Angelus also broadcast by Al Jazeera, said he was “strongly sorry for the reactions”, specifying that he did not share the thought expressed in the text quoted in Regensburg and inviting Islam to dialogue. But the crisis lasted a long time. Other sentences by Ratzinger on the need for international protection of the Copts in Egypt led to the breakdown of the dialogue with the University of Al-Azhar in Cairo, the highest institute of Sunni Islam, a dialogue which was then re-established only under the pontificate of his successor, Pope Francis.
THE LESSON ‘DENIED’ TO SAPIENZA – On 15 January 2008, at the request of the rector of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, the Pope was invited to speak at the inauguration of the academic year. This choice was criticized by 67 professors of the university, which led the Holy See to decline the invitation and aroused strong controversy in the political, journalistic and university world.
THE ‘REHABILITATION’ OF THE DENIAL BISHOP – An ‘accident’ with the Jewish world was caused by a step taken by Benedict XVI on the path of rapprochement with the schismatic ultra-traditionalists followers of Bishop Marcel Lefebvre. On 21 January 2009 the Pope granted the remission of the excommunication to the four Lefebvrian bishops and on the same day the Swedish TV Svt made public an interview in which one of the four, the British Msgr. Richard Williamson, professed a Holocaust denier position. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel immediately postponed some meetings with the Vatican. Urged by many quarters, the Pontiff in the general audience of January 28 spoke clear words to contest all forms of denial, express solidarity with the Jews and reaffirm the will to continue the dialogue.
Criticisms of the affair also reached the Pope from Angela Merkel.
On 4 February, a note from the Vatican Secretariat of State defined the positions of Msgr. Williamson, “not known” by the Pope “at the moment of the remission of the excommunication”.
THE VATILEAKS CASE, THE BUTLER ‘IN FAITHFUL’ – In 2012, the scandal of the leak of confidential documents of the Pope caused an unprecedented global outcry, many of which revealed plots and cases of corruption in the Vatican, stolen directly from the Pope’s secretariat by the butler’ unfaithful Paolo Gabriele, the layman closest to the Pope, and ended up in the book “His Holiness” by Gianluigi Nuzzi. On 24 May, a few days after the publication of the book, ‘Paoletto’ – as he was called in the papal family – was arrested by the Gendarmerie and locked up in a cell in the Vatican. “The events of the last few days concerning the Curia and my collaborators have brought sadness to my heart,” Ratzinger said in the May 30 general audience.
After a trial that lasted four hearings, Gabriele was sentenced to one year and six months in prison. The computer technician of the Secretariat of State Claudio Sciarpelletti was also sentenced to two months (suspended) in a separate trial. On December 22, Benedetto went to see the former room aide in his cell and pardoned him. There were less than two months left until February 11, 2013 when, in front of the astonished cardinals, he renounced the papacy.
VIGANO’S ‘BLEACHED’ LETTER – Among the incidents along the way, but following his resignation, we can mention the confidential letter that the Pope Emeritus sent in January 2018 to the then prefect of the Secretariat for Communication, Msgr.
Mario Edoardo Viganò, with whom he refused to write a “short and dense theological page” as an introduction to the 11-volume series “The Theology of Pope Francis” being released by Lev, edited by the future archbishop of Turin Roberto Repole. In the letter, among other things, Ratzinger expressed judgments on a German theologian who was against him and included among the authors of the series, also saying he was surprised by this. However, when the publication came out the following March, Viganò made public only a part of the missive – the rest was blurred in the photo or hidden -, the one in which Ratzinger described Pope Bergoglio as a “man of profound philosophical and theological formation” and underlined “the interior continuity between the two pontificates”.
However, the fact that the text was not complete came to light in a very short time and, amid bitter controversies, the letter was published in its entirety, but Viganò had to resign. (HANDLE).