Pope Benedict XVI, who died Saturday at the age of 95, was chosen by a divided college of cardinals to fill the shoes of Pope John Paul II. Instead he traded those shoes for Prada slippers and stumbled his way through a papacy fraught with controversy.
ROME—Some might argue that the cards were stacked from the start against Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected to become Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005. Benedict, who died Saturdaypopular Pope John Paul II
Benedict's troubled time at the helm of the Catholic church shouldn’t have come as a surprise, really. The theologian had led the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, formerly the church’s inquisition office, from 1981 until his election as pope. There he was the chief enforcer of the church’s strict dogma, often siding on the strict rule of church law over common sense.
, like Mexican priest Marcial Maciel Degollado, whose clear case of abuse complaints he sat on at the CDF until he was forced by an overwhelming amount of evidence to request the resignation of the priest, whose ability to fundraise for the church is still said to be missed. But it was his shocking and somewhat cowardly resignation in February 2011 that will forever seal Benedict’s legacy. Had he stayed at the helm until his natural end, he would have likely left a very different church, though one undoubtedly more united than it is today. Instead, his legacy as “the pope who resigned” has virtually cancelled out the shadows that dogged him when he ran the church.