Satan is a very clever breed of Pope.
I still think it was because they had something on JPII, who was notoriously lax with powerful sex offenders, such as Maciel. Just about the first act of BXVI was to remove Maciel.
I think he didn’t want to ruin the reputation of JPII, who was the first complete media cult-of-personality pope. BXVI felt it would have scandalized too many people whose faith was built entirely on JPII.
JPII was more or less orthodox, but. sometimes less rather than more. However, he had absolutely no control over the underlings. But he seems to have been devoted to Our Lady, and that was probably what people really liked and what BXVI wanted to protect.
Otherwise, he was horrible…a poor and lax administrator with a cult of personality who traveled the world to keep it going. I travel a lot and everywhere that he had been, the JPII Foundation had put up huge statues of him, including one on Malta at St Paul of the Shipwreck that showed him praying there on his visit and occupied the entire altar rail area in from of the cave.
But people would have been scandalized and destroyed had bad news come out about JPII, how he permitted people like McCarrick, Mahoney and Maciel, for example. I think the Sankt Gallen mafia threatened to reveal this unless BXVI, who was beginning to punish them for their crimes, resigned and got out of their way.