The complicated but lasting legacy of Benedict XVI. Published in Rappler on January 4, 2023.
Benedict XVI was a pope of paradoxes: the progressive peritus in Vatican II turned conservative gatekeeper of Council teaching, the extraordinarily gifted theologian who limited debate and silenced Catholic academics, above all the guardian of reform whose startling resignation reformed the Roman Catholic Church in the most fundamental way.
His death at the age of 95 was truly the end of an era: He is the last of the popes (after John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II) directly involved in the Second Vatican Council, which convened from 1962 to 1965. Pope Francis, who was still a Jesuit scholastic at the time, was ordained a priest only in 1969.
It is also possible that, if the pope who succeeds Pope Francis comes from the Global South again, Benedict may be the last European to serve as pope for some time to come. It is almost certain that the age of European dominance in the Church ended with Benedict's death. Or to be more precise, the dominance of the thinking that understands the Church as a European institution, highlighted by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's second reason for choosing Benedict as his papal name—to honor the great St. Benedict, he said, who "evokes the Christian roots of Europe."
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