Benedict XVI was therefore of a much less extroverted nature than his predecessor on the throne of stone. And it didn’t take long for him to crash into the carpet.
The Regensburg speech
September 12, 2006. The pope is back in his native Bavaria, in Regensburg. At the University, he gives a speech, dealing with the relationship between faith and reason. One of the passages will be very, but then very misinterpreted. Quoting from a discussion of the relationship between Christianity and Islam, he quotes the words that Manuel II Palaiologos, a Byzantine emperor of the early 15th century, spoke to a scholar from Persia. The imperial speech is this: “Show me then what Muhammad brought back, and you will find there only evil and inhuman things.” The sentence, taken out of the context of a “brilliant” speech – according to the words of the specialists -, will cause an uproar. Especially in the Muslim world. The communication error, flagrant, will generate a number of reactions. The sovereign pontiff, intellectual of great talent, will henceforth have to be very careful regarding his way of communicating.
Nevertheless, the dialogue between religions will be, under the pontificate of Benedict XVI, very present.
The return of the Lefebvrists
From the beginning of the pontificate, contact was resumed with the controversial Society of Saint Pius X. The rapprochement with the fundamentalists continued in January 2009, when he lifted the excommunication which struck four priests from the Lefebvrist fringe. Crits double in effect due to an obvious timing error. Indeed, a few weeks earlier, one of the interested parties, Richard Williamson, had questioned the existence of the Holocaust. World outcry, which passed among others by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Benedict XVI always wanted to bring the Society of Saint Pius X back into the bosom of the Catholic Church (see this article from Point of 2013). While during his past, he categorically refused such tolerance towards the Marxist current, this “double standard” will have been strongly reproached to him.
(In) curie romaine
Benedict XVI will have all the trouble in the world to put order in the affairs of the Vatican (as will be done later in the affair of the A cotton swab). Worse, he will often show himself to be so lonely that he will often seem disinterested in these earthly affairs.
Pope Francis will try, as soon as he arrives and with much more ardor, to reform of this opaque Curie, not without difficulty all the time…
