The scene is pure fiction but it says a lot about imaginations. In the movie The Two Popes, released in 2019, three times nominated for the Oscars, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, future Pope Francis, and his counterpart Joseph Ratzinger, soon to be Benedict XVI, cross paths in the toilets of the 2005 conclave. The Argentinian whistles a catchy tune, so that his comrade asks him what it is. “Abba”, replies Bergoglio, who was intoning Dancing Queen. Scholar Ratzinger is appalled.
In real life, the two popes never openly clashed until the death of Joseph Ratzinger on December 31, 2022. This Thursday, January 5, Francis will lead the funeral of his predecessor. Their coexistence resulting from the surprise renunciation of Benedict XVI, in 2013, an unprecedented choice since the 15th century, however underlined their oppositions, of style, ideology and vision of the Church. “The criticisms of Francis were fueled by the fact that there were two popes,” notes journalist and sociologist Frédéric Martel, author of Sodoma (Robert Laffont), an investigation into the Vatican translated into twenty languages.
There was only to listen to Christine Boutin, interviewed, December 5, 2021, on LCI. The former minister, honorary president of the Christian-conservative party Via, was questioned about her participation in the first meeting of Eric Zemmour. A commitment paralleled by the words of Pope Francis, after a meeting, the same day, with migrants parked in Lesbos, Greece. “Let us fight at the root against this dominant thought, this thought which concentrates on its own self, on personal and national egoisms, which become the measure and the criterion of everything”, declared the sovereign pontiff. “You could talk about Benedict XVI!” Christine Boutin immediately retorted. Discreet but still alive, the “pope emeritus”, as he had wished to call himself after his resignation, served for nearly ten years as a personality-refuge for all Catholics who do not recognize themselves in the action of the pope in place. Thus feeding – in spite of himself, perhaps – the criticism of François.
Nostalgic Gänswein
The culmination of their rivalry, skilfully maintained by the entourages, took on French accents. In January 2020, Fayard editions publish From the depths of our hearts, a work by Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, close to Joseph Ratzinger. The book is presented as co-signed by Benedict XVI. However, this is a plea for celibacy for priests, at a time when Francis seems to be considering authorizing the ordination of divorced men. The initiative is immediately commented on as a reframing of Jorge Bergoglio. Benedict XVI’s entourage confirms participation in the project, while denying that it is strictly speaking a “co-written” work, Ratzinger having only participated in the introduction and the conclusion. The episode will lead to the sanction of Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Ratzinger’s private secretary, relieved of his functions as prefect of the Vatican from February 5, 2020.
Leader of these inconsolable “Benoitseizists”, Gänswein nourished the nostalgia of the German clergyman to the end, by reading his last texts or by erecting his eulogy, as on May 20, 2016, in the great amphitheater of the university. Gregorian Pontifical, when he evokes, speaking of the Vatican, “an enlarged ministry, with an active member and a contemplative member”, in “a collegial and synodal dimension, almost a ministry in common”. Benedict XVI is this “contemplative pope”, a roundabout way of challenging part of Francis’ legitimacy. Ratzinger himself continued to call himself “Holiness” and to dress in a white cassock, as when he was pope.
It was enough for us to oppose these two popes, so different. Difficult to propose a more perfect opposition: one is European, conservative, intellectual of high level, turned towards theology and the Church. In the years following Vatican II, with the abandonment of the Latin Mass, Ratzinger became the interlocutor of the traditionalist protesters of the Society of Saint Pius X, led by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. He will make the unity of the Church a priority of his pontificate. Its secretary Gänswein is also known to have participated in one of the seminars of this fundamentalist fringe of the Church, excommunicated in 1988. The other is South American, turned towards the poor and the needy, a daring politician more than text specialist.
“Benedict XVI wanted to defend a white and Christian Europe”
“Ratzinger is a theologian turned towards doctrine, while Bergoglio is a pastor turned towards emancipation. I would almost say that Benedict XVI spoke to Catholics, while François speaks to Christians”, summarizes the lawyer Jean-Pierre Mignard, ex – co-editor of Christian Testimony : “They represent a fundamental opposition of the Church since Vatican II. Benedict XVI wanted to defend a white and Christian Europe, while Francis is more turned towards the rest of the world.”
“Between Benedict XVI and Francis, there were ruptures of priority”, agrees the historian Christophe Dickès, author of several books on the Vatican. This corresponds to the roadmap given to them by the conclaves: Benedict XVI had been chosen to perpetuate the work of his mentor John Paul II, while Francis was charged with reforming the curia and opening the papacy to the non-Western world. A marked opposition even in their choice of name: if Benoît chose to flow into a long history made up of 15 predecessors, François did not hesitate to innovate.
differences in temperament
While Benedict XVI has never made virulent anti-migrant or anti-poor remarks – far from it – he has never made these themes markers of his speech, unlike the importance of faith, piety and of tradition. This explains why, at the time of the most offensive declarations of François on immigration, he was able to become hollow, and without saying anything, the champion of the nationalists. “Benoit is my pope,” read a t-shirt by Matteo Salvini, then Italian MEP and head of the far-right Lega party, in September 2016.
Rightly or wrongly, Benedict XVI has become the pope of conservative Catholics, supporters “of theological stiffness or the reminder of dogma to avoid disintegration”, says Jean-Pierre Mignard. Christophe Dickès prefers to evoke a “pope of the middle classes, to whom François speaks less”. The question was also put to him. In July 2015, after returning from a tour of South America, during which he railed against capitalism, a journalist asked François, on the plane, why he never spoke of the middle class, the one “who works and pay taxes”. According to Reuters, the pope then acquiesced. “The middle class is shrinking. The polarization between the rich and the poor is great. It is a fact. And, perhaps, this phenomenon has led me not to take into account [les difficultés rencontrées par la classe moyenne]“, replied the Argentine pope.
To these differences in sensitivities are added differences in temperament. While the Jesuit Francis is known for his grip – among other evidence, he took control, in September 2022, of the order of Malta, after having his grand master resign, for the first time in nine centuries –, Benedict XVI was famous for never getting angry. “The 2005 conclave thought of electing an oak tree, and it elected a lamb”, smiles Christophe Dickès. Stanislas de Laboulaye, French ambassador to the Vatican between 2009 and 2012, confirms that Ratzinger felt very uncomfortable in palace intrigues: “Benedict XVI was an intellectual, turned towards theology and the Church more than towards the “International. He was also an elderly man who was presented with dramatic cases, pedophilia scandals. It was perhaps too heavy for him.”
“Today we see a gentle split within the Church”
Will the death of Joseph Ratzinger mark the end of internal criticism of Pope Francis? Jean-Pierre Mignard does not believe in it: “Today we see a gentle split within the Church, between those who wish the maintenance of tradition, including in what it has most closed, and those who wish that we also encourage the emancipation of people.” Behind Benedict XVI, other conservative cardinals have appeared, including Robert Sarah, probably too isolated in the Church to claim to become pope, but with a considerable media network, especially in France. In July 2022, this cleric who compared homosexuality to communism and Nazism, or announced a West “eliminated by a population of Islamic origin”, made the front page of Paris Match. The subtitle ? “A man of influence and peace”.
The long portrait is signed by Philippe Labro, a journalist close to the Catholic magnate Vincent Bolloré, more and more influential within the media of the Lagardère group, of which he acquired shares. Already in 2019, the boss of Vivendi, who feels “close to Benedict XVI”, told us his friend Bernard Poignant in January 2022, had personally wanted to recruit on CNews Eric Zemmour, who had rarely deprived himself of exhausting Francois. “Pope Francis is an enemy of Europe”, for example, the polemicist was indignant on October 5, 2020. The subject could fuel interesting family discussions because Yannick Bolloré, the general manager of Vivendi, youngest son of the dynasty, appreciates the speeches… by Jorge Bergoglio. To believe that in large families too, Catholicism is today crossed by two lines.