Pope Benedict XVI took the Catholic world by surprise by announcing his resignation at the end of the month allegedly "because of advanced age." (CNN)
While it may be true that part of his calling it quits may be due to health, where the Vatican confirmed that Benedict has had a pacemaker for years, which may have been an aggravating factor, pressure from the Vatileaks scandals could have been the trigger (Huffington Post).
The Vatileaks scandal, according the the Huffington Post in 2012, exposed alleged corruption that “cost the Holy See millions of euros (dollars) in higher contract prices”
Further the article added that this revelation “laid bare power struggles inside the Vatican over its efforts to show greater financial transparency and comply with international norms to fight money laundering. There was even a leak of a memo claiming that Benedict would die this year.”
I guess in lieu of death, resignation may have been the outcome. I blogged about this scandal last year.
Add to this other controversies that has plagued Pope Benedict’s reign.
From Reuters
The child abuse scandals hounded most of his papacy. He ordered an official inquiry into abuse in Ireland, which led to the resignation of several bishops…Benedict confronted his own country's past when he visited the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Calling himself "a son of Germany", he prayed and asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, most of them Jews, were killed there.Ratzinger served in the Hitler Youth during World War Two when membership was compulsory. He was never a member of the Nazi party and his family opposed Adolf Hitler's regime.
Of course most of mainstream media has been silent about this.
Yet in support of Occupy Wall Street, the Pope has spoken, if not ranted, against alleged “greed”, which he mistakenly had attributed to laissez faire capitalism.
Obviously, he had most likely been utterly confused or deliberately misled (by influence peddlers) in associating cronyism or corporatism for free markets.
And even more bizarre is that the Vatican has even endorsed the ECB’s inflationism! Redistribution from society (or transfer of wealth) to rich bankers and the political class has been by the Vatican as moral??!!
On the other hand, the Pope’s foray into politics by misreading and distorting economics could have been that capitalism served as convenient smokescreen from the internal controversies, wrangling, and power struggles that put pressure on the Pope and the Vatican.
As I previously wrote,
Is it not that the Bible warned that “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone”? (John 8:7)Does this not apply to the Vatican too?
Whether due to health or political controversies or both, this shows that Pope Benedict is just human, and thus subject to the frailties of humanity as shown whether in health, moral, organizational or even political economic issues.
