One month hence, Benedict XVI will turn 85.
He’s now the oldest pope in the last 109 years, since Leo XIII died in 1903 at 93, and will shortly become one of only six popes in the last 500 years to reign past the age of 85.
That list includes three pontiffs (Pius IX, Innocent XII and Clement X) who died within a year of turning 85, so if Benedict’s basic stability holds up, he’ll surpass them in 2013.
As the saying goes, German machinery is built to last!
By itself, Benedict’s advanced age probably would invite speculation about what comes next, even though there’s no indication of a health crisis.
This is, after all, a pontiff who departs this week for a six-day trip to Mexico and Cuba.
Yet it’s not just a birthday that has people thinking about succession.
There’s also a mounting perception that for all of Benedict’s brilliance as a teacher, something isn’t working in the internal governance of the Vatican, and it’s not likely to be fixed on his watch.
The tawdry “Vatileaks” scandal is the most recent symptom of a series of maladies — an inability to keep personal conflicts under control (the Boffo affair), to anticipate the foreseeable results of policy choices (the Holocaust-denying bishop debacle) and to tell even positive stories effectively (the pope’s role in the sex abuse crisis).
With this perceived crisis of competence in the background, two prominent voices in Italy have, in effect, declared the informal papal transition season to be open.
Strikingly, both belong to a political and cultural current dubbed the “theo-cons,” which includes secular nonbelievers who admire the moral authority of the Catholic church.
Both figures who’ve weighed in lately cheered the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy in 2005, and both have been among his ardent supporters.