(The Daily Beast) ROME—It’s a rare, and indeed, singularly unique opportunity to read what a pope really thinks of the job after it has finished. Pontificates generally end in funerals, not retirements. But in the case of Pope Benedict XVI, who spectacularly retired in 2013, we will soon get that rare glimpse of what it’s really like to be pope when his memoir, Benedict XVI: The Last Conversations, is published on September 9 in Italy and Germany...
Among
what will be the most anticipated nuggets in the memoir are Benedict’s
struggle with what he refers to as a “powerful gay lobby” of four or
five key people who did all they could to influence key decision makers
inside the Roman Curia, according to the paper. The existence of a gay
lobby is not surprising since Francis admitted as much
when he took the reigns of the Roman Catholic Church in March 2013. But
what’s extraordinary is the admission by a pope how much power they
truly had.
Benedict, who retired amid the Vatileaks scandal
during which his butler was convicted of stealing papers from his desk,
apparently writes in great detail how he struggled to “break up the
group” but stops short of blaming them for his landmark decision to
retire, which he says he did out of sheer exhaustion and his own
admission that he was not such a good manager, or, as he puts it, lacked
“resoluteness in governing.”
He denies long-held rumors that he was blackmailed and pressured to leave his post, and instead says he did it “freely.”
He also writes how surprised he was that he was elected pope in 2005 after John Paul II died. He describes the shock
of finding out that high-ranking cardinals were holding a secret shadow
conclave and had elected him before voting in the formal gathering in
the Sistine Chapel. He also says he didn’t sleep for days and was
incredibly anxious when he began his pontificate.
The
retired pope will also shed light on just how difficult it was for him
to combat the “filth that is in the church” and how many people tried to
stop his attempts at reforms. All of that should provide a window into
just how challenging it is for Pope Francis going forward... (continued)
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