What happens after the death of a pope emeritus? Uncertainty wins

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  Andrea Vrede

  Vatican correspondent

While the end of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI seems near, there is no doubt that there is discussion within the walls of Vatican City. Because what should happen when the 95-year-old retired pope dies?

After all, there is no funeral protocol for a retired pope. Well, obviously for that of a reigning pope. When he has breathed his last, death is first confirmed by his personal physician. Then tap the chamberlain, the cardinal who takes care of current affairs after the pope’s death, the deceased three times with a silver hammer on his forehead and calls him by his first name. When there is no response, he utters the words “the pope is dead” and the period after the funeral begins which will lead to the conclave and the election of a new pope.

But in this case, of course, there will be no conclave. A funeral, even if it is not yet clear how it will be. It probably won’t be a closed event, because after his abdication in 2013, Benedict XVI has made some important decisions. He chose to keep his papal name and wear white papal robes, almost no different from those worn by the reigning Pope Francis.

She retired to a converted convent in the Vatican gardens, surrounded by a small court staffed by her private secretary Georg Gänswein and four lay nuns. And this is where the problems started. After the election of his Argentine successor, there were suddenly two men in white in the Vatican, also vastly different in terms of vision and politics.

Although Benedict XVI has sworn allegiance to the new pope and pledged to lead a secluded life of silence and prayer, in practice this has not always been the case. In the early years of his retirement, he gave interviews to a German journalist, which were turned into a biography. He has also written articles critical of Pope Francis’ reforms.

Because shortly after taking office, Francis had changed the course of the Church. He places much less emphasis on doctrine and much more on practical charity. Francis wants an open, welcoming Church, in which there is more room for people who do not live according to doctrine, such as the divorced and remarried and homosexuals. A thorn in the side of his predecessor and of those who felt at home in Benedict’s pure and rigorous Church.

And so the monastery in the Vatican gardens became a haven for conservatives who loathed the new pope’s line and considered Benedict the “one and only” pope. Whether Benedict himself agreed with this is doubtful. It was above all his entourage (Gänswein) who strove to promote him as a custodian of the tradition.

Benedict seemed to agree with this to some extent, but ultimately refused to give in to the conservative bandwagon. Several times he felt compelled to publicly underline his fidelity to Francis. But the situation has never really been easy, perhaps because no one expected, not even Benedict himself, that his emeritus status would last longer than his pontificate.

Now Benedict XVI is almost dying. For almost eight years he was pope and head of state of the mini-state of Vatican City. Most likely he will be lying in St. Peter’s for three days, so that anyone who wishes can greet him. It seems likely that he will also receive an official funeral. Presumably with a funeral mass in St. Peter’s or in the square in front of the basilica, presided over by Pope Francis. He has never been seen before: a pope burying a pope.

It is not yet clear whether heads of state and government will also be present at that funeral mass. You would expect that. The only more or less certain thing is the place where Joseph Ratzinger will rest, as Benedict is called. He has expressed a preference for the empty tomb in the crypt under St. Peter’s where John XXIII and John Paul II have lain. Popes who are now both saints and whose bodies have been transferred to the basilica itself.

For all other parts of the protocol after his death, it remains a hypothesis for the time being, because with the death of this first pope emeritus, the Vatican has to invent a new tradition.