This historic document offers new insights that help us close the book on the speculation surrounding what will likely be remembered as a landmark event in Church history.
The story actually begins after the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013.
Nicolas Bux, a renowned liturgist close to "traditionalist" circles and a former consultant to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, asked the then-titled "Pope Emeritus" about the doubts and perplexities raised by the abrupt and sudden end of his pontificate.
Msgr. Bux is publishing Benedict’s response today, dated August 21, 2014, in Realtà e utopia nella Chiesa (Reality and Utopia in the Church, not yet translated), to be published in August 2025 by La Bussola.
The former Roman Pontiff writes clearly: "To assert that, in the context of my resignation, I have abandoned only the exercise of the ministry and not the munus (the office of successor of Peter) as such, is clearly contrary both to the doctrine of the Church and to the practice of canon law."
Besides defending the full validity of his resignation, the former Pope draws a parallel between a diocesan bishop and the Roman Pontiff in matters of resignation.
He asserts the right of an "emeritus" Pope to speak and write outside of his pontifical office, as he did by continuing to write works, such as his volumes on Jesus, which he considers a "mission entrusted to him by the Lord."
This expression struck a sour note within St. Martha’s House and was one of the likely causes of the estrangement of Georg Gänswein, former private secretary and prefect of the Pontifical Household of Benedict XVI, who has since become Apostolic Nuncio to Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia.
This document, whose existence was known but which Msgr. Bux had previously chosen not to publish to avoid having it becoming the subject of further controversy during the chaotic end of Pope Francis's pontificate, is of some historical importance.
It sheds light on Benedict XVI's thinking about his resignation, the institution of a "pope emeritus"—a notion that has understandably caused some unease among canon law scholars—and, more broadly, about his personal theological vision of the ministry of the Successor of Peter.
Bux's work includes a facsimile of the original, accompanied by the text of the letter addressed by Msgr. Bux: it shows Benedict XVI listing the various objections to the resignation and the concerns regarding a possible "desacralization" of the pontificate, and the former pope's response.
Critical commentaries on the Pope Emeritus's responses complement this correspondence.
It must be said that the figure of Pope Francis's predecessor occupies a central place in Msgr. Bux's work: the latter, as the publisher's website emphasizes, offers his analysis of the crisis of faith affecting the Church.
This analysis, while refraining from pointing fingers at the legacy of Vatican II as such, emphasizes the divide between a "principle of reality" embodied by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and a "utopia" characterized by the pontificate of Pope Francis.
The reality is of course more complex, and more water will have to flow under the Tiber and passions will have to calm down before the Church can fully re-appropriate a Tradition that it has sometimes forgotten, fascinated by the mirages of a deceptive modernity.