Posted on 01/01/2023 3:37:55 PM PST by ebb tide
A couple of months ago I was in a fascinating conversation with a Catholic colleague regarding the papacies of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, here in the ninth year of this curious era, 2013-22, when the world was living with, in effect, two popes of sorts, a reigning pope named Francis and a resigned pope — a “Pope Emeritus” — named Benedict XVI. We were wondering if the latter would, ironically, ultimately outlive the former, who few expected to have a papacy this long...
Indeed, my good friend and colleague John Gizzi at Newsmax reported this time last year (December 2021) that Vatican officials were expecting the death of Francis in 2022...
...
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died at 9:34 a.m. Rome time at age 95.
But confusion still reigns. It started when Pope Benedict baffled the world by resigning on February 11, 2013. His resignation, the first of a pope in six centuries (since Gregory XII in 1415), gave rise to the papacy of Jorge Bergoglio, which has been a papacy that has sowed a vast sea of confusion among the faithful and even non-faithful who no longer can look to the Holy See for the consistency it has been renowned for. It was a papacy that I used to frequently defend, including in a lengthy piece for Crisis Magazine in March 2019, but which I can no longer defend given Francis’ unending stream of mixed signals and contradictions and outright outrages. Pope Francis’ papacy, I regret to concede, has been a disaster. At a time when the world has desperately needed a papacy of clarity, which it had under Benedict, it has gotten a papacy of chaos.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Ping
“Pope Francis’ papacy, I regret to concede, has been a disaster.”
Hardly a disaster if “Hagan Lio” was the goal from the start
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