The essay “Il Monastero”, in which the editorialist of “Corriere della Sera” investigates the relationship between Bergoglio and Ratzinger, is released on 21 April for Solferino: the knot of Europe divides them
AAt the beginning of the book you feel as the author felt, when he entered the monastery for an interview shot by the media all over the world: here we are “in front of the disarming, enigmatic smile of Benedetto, motionless in an armchair, dressed in white as if he were still the reigning Pope and not the most famous “ex” in the world … the skinny wrists sticking out of the cuffs of the shirt with cufflinks, the clock on the left and on the right a wrist thermometer to constantly measure the state of his heart, the brown leather sandals, the image of a glass man who could break at the first gust of the west: this is what makes the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery the strangest and most interesting place in the Vatican. Yet that fragility has persisted for nine years… ».
Massimo Franco has always studied power. His reportage-investigation on Bettino Craxi (Hammamet) and his biography of Giulio Andreotti are long-sellers who have explored the crisis of the First Republic. Then, faced with the evident intellectual and cultural decline of Italian politics, Franco moved the center of his analysis on the Vatican, to which he dedicated some successful essays, projecting the Holy See on the dimension that belongs to it of the great geopolitical game of the global world. Solferino published two years ago The Bergoglio enigmaand now he prints a book dedicated to the other side of the coin: The Monastery. Benedict XVI, nine years of shadow papacy.
It is a journey, sometimes even a physical one, within the Vatican walls. Where the apostolic apartment, the Pope’s residence for centuries, is empty. But where there are two Popes. The first, the reigning one, in a residence called Casa Santa Marta, room 201. The other, the emeritus one, in a cloistered convent, inhabited mainly by women. An unprecedented situation in history, not regulated by any rules, and for this reason a harbinger of misunderstandings, rivalry, underground clashes not so much between Ratzinger and Bergoglio how much between the respective entourages, and between two camps fighting each other – up to the limits of the schism – to determine in which direction the Church should go, in a turning point in the history of Christianity and humanity.
It all starts with Benedict’s resignation. That he feels his strength failing, that he feels the near end. «Nobody would have said – writes Massimo Franco – that the“ parallel papacy ”, that of the Monastery, would have accompanied the Argentine pontificate of Casa Santa Marta for the whole time; who would have supported him, helped him and then, unwittingly and without seeking him, challenged by the will of others rather than his own “.
At first everything seemed to go smoothly. Francis goes to Castel Gandolfo to find Benedict, who entrusts him with the box with all the papers of the Vatican investigation into the scandals, that terrible season which culminated in the day, May 24, 2012 – “diabolical coincidence” for Father Georg Gaenswein, true co-star of this book – the expulsion of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi from the IOR and the arrest of Paolo Gabriele, the Pope’s butler. Francis reciprocates the gesture of trust by submitting to Benedict, before publication, the text of his first interview as Pope, almost a program of the pontificate , granted to Father Antonio Spadaro; and receiving four pages full of notes from Ratzinger (the two Popes both have a minute handwriting, Bergoglio’s even more so).
But then the delicate balance is broken. Franco reconstructs the various stages of the relationship between the two Popes. The editorial messes crossed: the censorship of the veiled criticisms of Ratzinger, called to review “booklets” of theology signed by Bergoglio together with other prelates including two ancient critics and sworn enemies of Benedict; the release of a book improperly co-signed by Cardinal Sarah and Ratzinger, who defends priestly celibacy on the eve of the synod that was to open to approved men (allowing not priests to marry, but married ones to become priests).
The investigation is full of details, unpublished background, tasty episodes, which can also be appreciated by those who, unlike the author, are not familiar with Vatican matters; including relations with Trump and Biden, the role of Ruini and Bertone, even the two alleged “death plots”, the first against Benedict, the second against Bergoglio. But at the center of Massimo Franco’s analysis there is an intuition. The split – undeniable – between the two popes is not so much dictated by the evident differences in style. It is not just a question between conservatives and progressives. It is not a question of establishing from which current of thought the risk of the schism could come, whether from reactionaries annoyed by Francis’s innovations or from German bishops dissatisfied with his hesitations. The real distance is on the idea of Europe. Battleground, land to be re-evangelized, theater of the decisive clash with relativism, according to Ratzinger; continent exhausted for the American Bergoglio, elected by an openly anti-Italian conclave, and which for nine years has refrained from enhancing the Italian Church, to the point that for the first time in history the archbishops of Milan, Venice, Turin, Palermo (and for a year not not even the secretary of state was a cardinal). “The trauma of the renunciation of 2013 has not been disposed of or overcome,” concludes the author. “The Church sometimes appears even more divided than that of 2013”. And the next Conclave may be “a reckoning with very uncertain outcomes”.
April 19, 2022 (change April 19, 2022 | 20:47)
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