Vatican ‘Abp.’ Gänswein: Since Benedict XVI’s Abdication, there is now a Two-Member “Expanded Papacy”

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Since [February 11, 2013] we’ve lived through a historic epoch, unprecedented in the Church’s 2,000-year history. As in the days of St. Peter, so even today the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church knows of only one lawful Pope [at a time]; however, for the last three years we’ve lived with two living successors of St. Peter among us — both of them not competing with each other, yet both of them having an extraordinary presence! We may add that before then, the spirit of Joseph Ratzinger had already shaped the long pontificate of St. John Paul II in a decisive way, whom he had served faithfully as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for almost a quarter of a century. Today many still experience this new situation as a kind of divine state of emergency.

…I was present when he decided not to renounce his name [Benedict XVI]. He did not return to being Joseph Ratzinger, as Pope Celestine V did, who after a pontificate of a few months once again became Pietro di Morrone on December 13, 1294.

Since February 11, 2013, therefore, the papacy is no longer what it was before. It will remain the Catholic Church’s foundation. However, Benedict XVI has altered this foundation in a permanent way by means of his “anomalous pontificate” (Ausnahmepontifikat), about which in a first reaction the levelheaded Cardinal Sodano declared, right after the surprising declaration of resignation, that the news had struck the assembled cardinals “like a bolt of lightning out of the blue”. That was in the morning of the very day on which in the evening a kilometer-long lightning bolt, accompanied by incredible roaring, truly struck the tip of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, above the grave of the prince of the Apostles. Rarely has there been a more dramatic cosmic accompaniment for a historical turning point, one may presume. Yet, the morning of this very February 11, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, concluded his response to Benedict XVI’s declaration with a first and similarly cosmic evaluation of his pontificate, closing with these words: “Certainly, the stars of Heaven will always keep twinkling, and in like manner the star of your pontificate will always shine among us.” “Certo, le stelle nel cielo continuano sempre a brillare e così brillerà sempre in mezzo a noi la stella del suo pontificato.”

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In essence, the epochal resignation of the “Pope of theologians” was therefore a step forward, when on February 11, 2013, speaking in Latin, he established in front of the surprised cardinals the new institution of the “Pope emeritus” in the Catholic Church, on the grounds that, as he put it, his strength was no longer sufficient “to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry [munus Petrinum].” The key word in this declaration is the term munus Petrinum, which was translated as “Petrine ministry” here, as it usually is. However, the Latin munus has many meanings. It can mean service, task, direction, or gift — even miracle. Benedict understands his mission as a participation in such a “Petrine ministry”, both before and after his resignation, even today still.

He vacated his chair, but he did not renounce this ministry [service] with the step he took on February 11, 2013. Instead, he augmented the personal office with a collegial and synodal dimension, as a shared ministry so to speak (als einen quasi gemeinsamen Dienst), as though he wanted to repeat once more the invitation inherent in the motto which Joseph Ratzinger had given himself as Archbishop of Munich and Freising and of course retained as Bishop of Rome: “cooperatores veritatis”. That is in German, “Mitarbeiter der Wahrheit” [in English, “coworkers of the truth”]. For it is not a singular but a plural form, taken from 3 John, where it says in verse 8: “We therefore ought to receive such, that we may be fellow helpers [coworkers] of the truth.”

Thus, there have not been two Popes since the election of his successor Francis on March 13, 2013, but there is de facto an expanded ministry — with an active and a contemplative member. That’s why Benedict XVI did not take off his white cassock, nor did he give up his name. That’s why even today the correct way to address him is, “Holy Father” (in Italian: Santità [Holiness]), and that is why he did not retire to a secluded monastery but to the inside of the Vatican — as though he had only stepped aside in order to make room for his successor and for a new stage in the history of the papacy, which, by means of this step, he enriched by the power of his prayers and his shared suffering (Mitleidens) in the Vatican Gardens.

As [Roberto] Regoli writes, this was “the step least expected in contemporary Catholicism”; [it was] a possibility, however, which Cardinal Ratzinger had publicly pondered as far back as August 10, 1978, in Munich in a sermon on the occasion of the death of Paul VI. Thirty-five years later, then, he himself did not flee from the Petrine ministry, which would have been entirely impossible for him after his irreversible acceptance of the office in April 2005. Instead he renewed this ministry and, in an act of extraordinary courage (even against well-meaning and thoroughly-competent advisors), and with his last strength, multiplied it, it is my hope. Only history can prove this, though. But this will remain in Church history, in which the world-renowned theologian on the Chair of Peter became the first “Papa emeritus” in history. Since then his role has — once again — been completely different from the one of, say, Pope St. Celestine V, who after his resignation in 1294 wanted to return to being a hermit and instead became prisoner of his successor Boniface VIII (to whom we are indebted today for the introduction of jubilee years into the Church). A step like that of Benedict XVI had just never been taken before. That’s why it is no surprise that for this reason some perceived it as revolutionary or as being in exceeding conformity with the Gospel, whereas others see the papacy secularized as never before and thus [made] more collegial and more functional or simply more human and less sacred. Others still are of the opinion that with this step Benedict XVI has — speaking in theological and historical-critical terms — demythologized the office, so to speak.

(“Archbishop” Georg Ganswein, in “Das Ende eines Alten und der Beginn eines Neuen”, kath.net, May 23, 2016; our translation.)