AFTER the initial shock came the speculation. Pope
Benedict XVI surprised even his closest advisers on Monday by announcing
that he was standing down. But within hours the Vatican was awash, not just with the inevitable talk of who would succeed him, but with whispers about the "real story" behind the first papal resignation in over 600 years.
Once the Vatican bureaucracy started chewing it over, the theories it spat out were quickly flying around.
And from there it is one short step to finding their way into the Italian press.
Dan Brown couldn't have made it up.
The ecclesiastical earthquake of a Pope resigning has been attributed, variously, to Benedict nursing a fatal illness; to a head injury during his trip to Mexico last March that convinced him to abdicate; to being forced out after an acrimonious meeting with a group of senior cardinals two days before he announced his resignation; to his looming disgrace over dodgy deals done by the Vatican Bank, past cover-ups of paedophile priests, or an "explosive" forthcoming report by a team of cardinals on a tendering scandal; and to a strategy to secure the succession for his favourite.
All of which, at first glance, makes me and many Catholics seem hopelessly naive for taking at face value Benedict's explanation – namely that he was too old to continue as chief executive of a multinational church of 1.3 billion souls.
Given that he is 85, that sounded perfectly reasonable.
But then, in Saint Peter's Basilica on Ash Wednesday, Benedict appealed to his church to move beyond "individualism and rivalry".
Could these be the coded final words of a deposed Pope?
Let's examine the evidence offered by the conspiracy theorists. Back in November, they point out, Benedict was busy reconfiguring his private office so it could better support him in bearing the burden of being Pope.
His good-looking secretary, Mgr Georg Ganswein (known as "the Black Forest Adonis" and "Mgr Clooney" in the Italian press), was promoted to be Head of the Pontifical Household – effectively gatekeeper to Benedict.
Why go to all that trouble if you are going to resign two months later?
And
yet simultaneously, the Benedictine nuns at the Mater Ecclesiae Convent
in the gardens of the Vatican were moving out while their building –
which will now house Benedict in retirement – was renovated.
It suggests that the Pope may have been in two minds about his future – but that hardly constitutes a scandal.
This
instinctively conservative figure with a strong sense of history was
contemplating a radical decision. No wonder he needed time to think and
pray.
Then there is the pacemaker.
The way the Italian
press told it, Benedict had been having secret treatment for a "mystery
ailment".
The reality, though, appears to be that he had a routine
procedure to replace a pacemaker.
WHAT, though, of that
rumoured showdown with an inner cabal of plotting cardinals – the
equivalents of the fictional Preferiti of 'Angels and Demons'? Is that
what did for Benedict?
There is ample evidence that the
senior figures in his Vatican have been jostling for position.
Last
year's 'Vatileaks' scandal – when the Pope's butler, Pablo Gabriele, was
found guilty of stealing his master's papers – drew back the veil on a
culture of character assassination.
The principal target
was Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (77), the Vatican secretary of state
(prime minister and foreign secretary run into one). He was number two
when Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger, ran the old Holy Office.
Supporters of the man Bertone replaced in 2006, Cardinal Angelo Sodano,
complain loudly of his lack of diplomatic experience.
But the internal rumblings go further than a personality clash.
They even stretch to money.
The
Vatileaks papers revealed that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano – the
cleric Benedict appointed to turn the Holy See's annual deficit into a
profit – felt that he was ousted in 2011, possibly at the behest of
Bertone.
And there have also been repeated suggestions
that the Vatican Bank has once again been getting itself into unholy
waters of money laundering in its dealings with a troubled Italian bank,
Monte Paschi di Siena.
So all is not divine harmony
within the Vatican, but it is a very big leap from "individualism and
rivalry" to the Pope having been forced to resign – as we discovered
when British author David Yallop produced 'In God's Name', alleging that
John Paul I, who lasted only 33 days in 1978 and died in mysterious
circumstances, had been murdered by a group of cardinals.
Yallop's
evidence was blown out of the water and the truth was much more mundane.
Running the Catholic Church had proved too great a strain for the
65-year-old.
His is a cautionary tale in every sense –
about the wisdom of appointing men near retirement age to such a taxing
job and of lapping up every whiff of scandal and hypocrisy attributed to
the church. Which – sorry to disappoint you folks – brings us back to
Benedict's explanation of his resignation.
For all that
it is extremely rare, his choice to stand down is absolutely in line
with canon (church) law.
Indeed, an ailing John Paul II is said twice to
have penned resignation letters as Parkinson's disease reduced this
once athletic figure to immobility and made even speech slow and
painful.
Perhaps it was the sight of his long-time boss
struggling and eventually dying in public that convinced Benedict such a
course wasn't for him.
He will have seen what we didn't – those same
turbulent cardinals jockeying for position around the Polish pontiff
and, reportedly, blocking the then Cardinal Ratzinger's efforts to start
getting to grips with the paedophile priest scandal.
By resigning Benedict has ensured his own place in history – but not in the annals of infamy.