Will Pope Francis Resign Now That Benedict XVI Has Died?

(ANALYSIS) One of my five things to watch for in 2023 included media speculation over Pope Francis’ health and speculation over his possible retirement. Within three days of that post — and prompted by the death on Dec. 31 of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at the age of 95 — speculation increased once again.

This is what I wrote in that Dec. 28 post:

The pope has often praised the decision of his predecessor, now Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI, to resign because he felt unable to carry the duties of the papacy due to his advanced age.

In 2013, Benedict, who currently lives in a monastery at the Vatican and is seldom seen, became the first pontiff to resign in 600 years, paving the way for Francis’ election. Now his health appears to be failing.

Will there be a new conclave in 2023? There’s no way to know that now. One thing, however, is certain. Speculation will only mount with each passing day. Pope Francis isn’t getting younger.

The election of a new pope is a story journalists love to report. It’s something like a cross between a presidential election and a royal wedding. The bottom line: Journalists see it as a political horse race.

Speculation will certainly mount. Journalists love elections.

Much of the speculation over what Benedict’s death means for Francis, however, cast a shadow over what should have been stories around the legacy of former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Instead, the news coverage quickly shifted to “what happens next” — not an unusual journalism strategy in order to have political-style coverage that looks ahead rather than at the past — and whether Francis would someday step down.

Francis has left the door open to that possibility, but it’s really a guess as to what will happen. Much of the journalism from the week after Benedict died did a very good job looking at what the Vatican is doing and the protocols they are studying in order to make Francis’ retirement — or that of any future pontiff — less shocking than when Benedict did so in Febriuary 2013.

In fact, we are nearing the 10th anniversary of that announcement, something that will certainly spur more stories about this pontiff’s future. In the meantime, there was plenty of news coverage around what Francis can, or will, do next. This is how Reuters reported on it.

The death on Saturday of Benedict, who in 2013 became the first pontiff in 600 years to step down instead of reigning for life, should make any decision to step down easier on Francis and the Church, which has struggled enough with having “two popes”, let alone three — two retired and one reigning.

It could also prompt the current pontiff to review what happens to future popes who decide to shuffle away from office because of old age rather than holding on until they die.

Francis is now 86, one year older than Benedict was when he retired. Despite needing a cane and a wheelchair, he shows no sign of slowing down. Trips are planned for Africa this month and Portugal in August.

He has made it clear that he would not hesitate to step down someday if his mental or physical health impeded him from leading the 1.3 billion-member Church.

The news story by longtime Reuters correspondent Philip Pullella, one of the best reporters in the Vatican press corps, also detailed what could happen should Francis choose to retire. This is what he reported:

Now that longer life spans have made papal resignations no longer unthinkable, there have been repeated calls from Church leaders to regulate the role of former pontiffs, in part because of the confusion stemming wrought by two men wearing white living in the Vatican.

Francis told a Spanish newspaper last month that he did not intend to define the juridical status of popes emeritus, although he had previously indicated privately that a Vatican department could script such rules.

Australian Cardinal George Pell, a conservative who was close to Benedict, has written that while a retired pontiff could retain the title of “pope emeritus”, he should return to being a cardinal, and be known as “Cardinal (surname), Pope Emeritus”.

Pell also said a former pontiff should not wear white, as Benedict did, telling Reuters in a 2020 interview that it was important for Catholics to be clear that “there is only one pope”.

Academics and canon lawyers at Italy’s Bologna University who have studied the issue say the Church cannot risk even the appearance of having “two heads or two kings” and have proposed a set of rules.

They say a former pope should not return to being a cardinal, as Pell proposes, but be called “Bishop Emeritus of Rome”. Francis told Reuters in July that is precisely what he would want to be called.

Like Reuters, The Associated Press also delved into Francis’ future. This is what the AP reported, asking, and attempting to answer, several key questions:

Will Francis issue new protocols to regulate the office of a retired pope, after Benedict largely winged it on the fly? Will he feel more free to consider his own retirement, now that the main impediment to resignation — having two emeritus popes at the same time — has been removed? How does a reigning pope celebrate the funeral of a retired one?  

“I think that his death will open problems, not close problems,” said Massimo Franco, the author of “The Monastery,” a book about Benedict’s revolutionary retirement.

According to preliminary information released by the Vatican, Benedict’s funeral … in St. Peter’s Square seems designed to be low-key, in keeping with his wishes for “simplicity” but also making clear that his status as an emeritus does not merit a pomp-filled papal sendoff.

The AP also mentioned the war within the church between traditionalists and progressives, arguing that “throughout Benedict’s 10-year retirement, many traditionalists continued to consider Benedict a point of reference, and some even refused to respect the legitimacy of Francis as pope.”

This is what the AP also reported:

“I am convinced that the most appropriate ways will be found so as not to engender confusion in the people of God, even though this doesn’t seem to me to be the right time for proclamations and clarifications,” Geraldina Boni, a professor of canon law at the University of Bologna, said.

Thanks to Benedict’s “meekness and discretion,” and Francis’ “strong and affable temperament,” any possible rivalry was avoided, she said. But that may not be case in the future.

The work to clarify how things would work the next time there is both a sitting and a retired pope has already started. A team of canon lawyers launched a crowd-sourcing initiative in 2021 to craft a new church law to govern how a retired pope lives out his final years.

The project, explained at progettocanonicosederomana.com, includes proposals on everything from his title to his dress, pension and activities to make sure they “don’t interfere directly or indirectly” with his successor’s governance.

The website mentioned above is in Italian. It also features a link in English. It states the following:

By working together through digital means and as already announced by Prof. Geraldina Boni in her essay Una proposta di legge, frutto della collaborazione della scienza canonistica, sulla sede romana totalmente impedita e la rinuncia del papa, a group of Canon law scholars from different countries has prepared two different law proposals: the first one concerns the regulation of the Roman See when it is entirely impeded because of external circumstances or the Roman Pontiff’s temporary or permanent inhabilitas; the second one regards the relevant issues pertaining to the legal status of the Bishop of Rome who resigned his office.

This virtual space is meant to be the place where what was developed is brought to the attention of the Canon law scholarship from all over the world: the purpose is to enhance and improve the law proposals through the suggestions received, in order to present them, in the end, for the consideration of the Church’s legislator.

The website also features a link to this Rome Reports video. Rome Reports describes itself as a “private and independent international TV news agency based in Rome, Italy, specializing in covering the Pope and the Vatican.” You can check out the video. This website is definitely a resource journalists need to bookmark in order to check back in the coming months.

The Guardian’s coverage on the matter was predictable in that it focused on internal divisions in the church seen through a political lens.

Despite a highly fictionalised bromance movie, The Two Popes, starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, some have sought to exploit differences and create divisions between Francis and Benedict.

The Vatican is a deeply factional place. There are many enemies of Pope Francis’s relatively progressive agenda with its focus on poverty, refugees and the climate crisis. This Christmas, he criticised “hunger for wealth and power.”

Some of Francis’s opponents have tried to rally support for conservative values around Benedict as an alternative figurehead.

In thinking about the possibility of retirement, Francis — who turned 86 earlier this month — will have considered the impact of two retired popes on his own successor.

With Benedict’s death, the path to retirement becomes a little easier. 13 March will be the 10th anniversary of Francis’s election as the Roman Catholic church’s 266th pontiff. Some time around then, or in the following months, perhaps after a key synod of bishops in the autumn, may seem an appropriate time for an announcement.

Catholic media offered a respite from such shallow pronouncements that journalists have frequently offered without any real reporting or interviews to back it all up. The Pillar featured a wonderful piece, this one by J.D. Flynn, on Francis’ future. This is the key section:

There has been a great deal of media speculation about the relationship between Benedict and Francis, but little can be known in fact. On the surface, the men were effusive in praise for each other — Francis made a point to revere Benedict as a “grandfather,” Benedict made a point to show his obedience to Francis.

But the men come from different schools of thought on theology, liturgy, and governance. They had different sets of friends and advisors, different sets of priorities, different approaches. One prelate, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, was for years officially tasked with serving both of them — but eventually that proved unworkable, and Gänswein was in 2020 suspended from his duties in Francis’s administration.

Even those who revere both Francis and Benedict concede that their differences are clear, and that while they also have things in common, much has changed in the Church over the past decade, and much of it because of a change in administration.

Flynn also details those changes in a way like only the Catholic press can — through a theological, rather than political, lens. Here is what he argues:

One example is the pope’s revocation of Summorum pontificum, Benedict’s effort to integrate the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite into the ordinary liturgical life of the Church — in part to see it fuel a kind of liturgical reform in the Church. In 2021 Francis undid that effort, and at the same time indicated that he saw very little place for the older form of the liturgy in the Church’s life. Benedict said nothing publicly — though after his death, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a priestly society which offers the older liturgy, said that the former pope had sent them a letter of support.

Of course, not all changes can be attributed to Francis himself. Consider that the pontiff himself has taken pains to emphasize intellectual continuity with Benedict and John Paul II, but that some of the scholars placed in influential intellectual positions in Rome have embraced a theological hermeneutic which suggests that Benedict’s intellectual school, the Communio crowd, had been a kind of interruption in the council’s implementation.

At the same time, ecclesial figures in Germany, among other places, have become outspoken in rejecting, or at least sidestepping, Benedict’s approach to moral theology and Christian anthropology, as they call for a new sexual ethic to govern the Church’s doctrine. Even officials at the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life have suggested the possibility that the Church's doctrine on the immorality of artificial contraception could be changed — something at odds with Benedict's theological viewpoint on the matter.

Whether it was mainstream news coverage or the Catholic press, there were plenty of storylines about Pope Francis’ future stemming from Benedict’s death. This isn’t much of a surprise. What is a surprise is that the coverage was generally solid and something that could take on great importance as the year progresses.

It is certainly true that a key part of Benedict’s legacy is the papacy of Pope Francis. It’s also true that Benedict’s actions — and becoming the first pontiff in 600 years to step down — could impact Francis’ future plans. The church now finds itself having to deal with such a possibility. It’s also an issue journalists need to understand as they prepare for future papal coverage.

This post originally ran at GetReligion.

Clemente Lisi is a senior editor at Religion Unplugged and teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York City. He is the author of “The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet’s Biggest Sporting Event.” Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.