Retired Pope Benedict XVI, who led Church through turbulent period, dies at 95

Pope Benedict XVI, the bookish conservative pillar of the Roman Catholic Church who ended his turbulent tenure in 2013 by becoming the first pontiff to retire in six centuries, died Saturday in Vatican City. He was 95.

The retired pope died at 9:34 a.m. local time in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, a Vatican spokesman said.

Benedict, a soft-spoken former professor from the Bavaria region of Germany, proved a polarizing pope. He favored a more ideologically uniform Catholic Church, rejected any moves toward the ordination of women and said that gay marriage, abortion and euthanasia threatened world peace.

His papacy came as the church reeled from disclosures about sexual misconduct by priests, and he recently came under fire anew over his alleged inaction in response to sexual abuse within the church. Still, to his supporters, Benedict was a brilliant theologian who brought a refreshingly understated style to the papacy.

The announcement of Benedict’s death arrived days after Pope Francis issued a call for prayer on behalf of his predecessor. “I want to ask you all for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict who sustains the church in his silence. He is very sick,” Francis said during a general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday.

That same day, Benedict received the sacrament of the anointing of the sick, a Vatican spokesman said. His remains will be on public display in St. Peter’s Basilica starting Monday, and Francis is expected to celebrate a funeral Mass on Thursday in St. Peter’s Square — likely the first time in history a sitting pope presides over the funeral of a former one.

Benedict spent the last decade living in a monastery in Vatican City, focusing on meditation and prayer. He struggled with his health for years.

In February 2013, Benedict, then 85, sent shockwaves through the world by declaring that he could no longer adequately serve the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics due to his “advanced age” and deteriorating health. The move surprised even his closest aides.

“Strength of mind and body are necessary,” Benedict told what was expected to be a routine meeting of cardinals. “I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.”

The news, first delivered in Latin, rippled around the globe, offering one of the most dramatic moments in the modern history of the church.

Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti described Benedict’s decision as “immense and unexpected.” Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said he was “very startled.”

Though popes typically serve until death, Benedict had grown frail, and had started using a moving platform to be transported to and from the altar. He sometimes fell asleep at Mass.

As he stepped aside, he left behind a changed church molded by scandal and pulled into the digital age. He was the first pope to use Twitter, and he spoke out loudly for environmental causes.

But he also left behind a church that was, in many ways, still gripped by crisis. The sex abuse scandal that tainted his tenure continued to cast a shadow on him in retirement.

Early in 2022, a church-commissioned investigation found a lack of credibility in Benedict’s claim that he had no direct knowledge of sexual abuse in his German archdiocese prior to his election to the papacy. Benedict, who provided an 82-page response, denied wrongdoing, but offered an apology.

“I have had great responsibilities in the Catholic Church,” he said in a public letter. “All the greater is my pain for the abuses and the errors that occurred in those different places during the time of my mandate. Each individual case of sexual abuse is appalling and irreparable.”

Benedict was named pope in 2005, following a swift selection inside the Sistine Chapel. His election was one of the quickest conclaves in modern history. At 78, he became the oldest man chosen as pontiff in 275 years and the first German to hold the post in nearly 500 years.

He succeeded Pope John Paul II, the long-serving Polish pontiff and a challenging act to follow. Where John Paul was seen as a charmer who effortlessly won the hearts of lapsed Catholics and heads of state, Benedict was often seen as stoic.

Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, who would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI, was born in Marktl am Inn in Bavaria on April 16, 1927. The son of a policeman and a hotel cook, he entered the seminary at 12. His early teens were marred by World War II.

He admitted in his memoirs to joining the Hitler Youth in 1941, when membership was compulsory, and was later forced to serve as a helper in a Nazi anti-aircraft unit. He deserted the German Army in 1945 only to be captured by American soldiers, and spent several months as a prisoner of war.

He rarely spoke about his early years later in life.

A natural academic, he spent his early decades as a priest immersed in books. After his ordination in 1951, he became a well-regarded professor of theology at numerous German universities and was appointed archbishop of Munich in 1977. He was summoned to Vatican City a few years later.

Benedict would spend nearly a quarter-century working in the Vatican as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a powerful office responsible for enforcing orthodox doctrine. He was also given oversight of cases involving clergy sex abuse claims and became a close adviser to John Paul.

When Benedict became pope, he inherited a church bombarded by allegations of sexual misconduct. Critics said he tried to cover up allegations, while supporters praised him for reaching out to victims and issuing an apology to sex abuse survivors in Ireland.

“No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,” Benedict said in a 2008 homily in Washington, D.C., before meeting victims of abuse for the first time. “It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention.”

Further controversy would mar Benedict’s reign, including an act of deception by a butler who stole sensitive documents from the papal offices and then leaked them to an Italian journalist. The so-called Vatileaks scandal shed light on the infighting and dysfunction within the Curia, the highest level of bureaucracy within the Vatican.

In his last public audience in St. Peter’s Square, Benedict conceded that the job had been challenging at times — testing his faith to its core. “There were moments,” he said, “as there were throughout the history of the church, when the seas were rough and the wind blew against us and it seemed that the Lord was sleeping.”

Benedict pledged obedience to his successor, Francis, and the two men made history by kneeling and praying together in a chapel days after Francis’ installation.

In the twilight of his life, Benedict assumed the title of pope emeritus. He played piano, prayed and strolled the manicured lawns of the palatial Castel Gandolfo, the papal residence about 15 miles southeast of Rome where he had vacationed in the summer as pontiff.

He was often accompanied by his personal assistant, Georg Gänswein, who also joined Benedict on his final fly-by over St. Peter’s Square during his last day in office.

When he appeared in public for the last time as pope on the balcony of Castel Gandolfo, Benedict outstretched his arms to thousands crammed into the square below.

“I am simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on this Earth,” he said, before turning his back and slowly stepping out of sight.

With Daily News Staff and News Wire Services