Pope Benedict, aka ‘God’s Rottweiler,’ Seethed at Queers

It was April in 2008, and I was going for walks down first avenue in Manhattan, when I was stopped by the law enforcement at 86^th Street. I observed that there ended up people congregating alongside the road – not a good deal, but plenty of to know that anyone critical was coming by.

“Who is it this time?” I requested the cop who stopped me. “It’s the Pope,” he reported.

Certain adequate, a few of minutes later on Pope Benedict’s motorcade drove by. He was sitting in a limousine at the rear of the passenger seat, which was the aspect of the street I was on, so I observed him up near. The initial factor I discovered was how small he was. His head, adorned with the ever-current white cap, or zucchetto, hardly cleared the window. Rather than have interaction the folks lined up on the street, Benedict stared straight ahead. He seemed chilly and distant.

A few times later on, I experienced lunch with my wonderful close friend, the late Father Angelo, and I instructed him that I experienced seen the Pope. He appeared up at me with disappointment in his eyes, and shot back again, “Why would you want to see him?”

Precisely.

On his demise nowadays, even though scanning all the tv coverage and looking at information stores about it, I was struck by the simple fact that almost each and every journalist said that Benedict’s legacy would be that he was the initially pope to resign in 600 years. But I don’t consider that’s correct. If the Catholic Church at any time opens its vault of top secret files, and becomes transparent, it will only even further set up that Benedict, while he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was even additional complicit in masking up the Church’s priest abuse scandal.

When Germany’s Munich diocese, which Ratzinger led as archbishop in the 1970s and ’80s, posted a report about its response to the intercourse abuse scandal, it implicated then-Bishop Ratzinger, indicating that he failed to handle at the very least four instances of abuse. Benedict, as Pope Emeritus, denied it, despite the evidence. We’re taught to inform the real truth as Catholics, so the hypocrisy by Benedict is as alarming as it is unfortunate.

Tale carries on

Benedict served as one of Pope John Paul II’s most senior advisors. He led the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the business responsible for overseeing the church’s doctrine. He was termed “God’s Rottweiler” for his ferocious protection of extremely-conservative church doctrine.

When he became Pope, he did choose techniques to tackle the abuse scandal, which was at its top when he was elevated to pope from the Higher education of Cardinals in 2005 even so, his actions ended up deemed woefully inefficient by some, including me. As a survivor of a priest’s abuse, I adopted this problem incredibly closely, and I felt that Benedict had a cherry-buying and smoke and mirror reaction to the scandal.

The late Barbara Blaine, president of Survivors Network of those people Abused by Monks all through Benedict’s papacy, agreed. “I would detest for him to be remembered as an individual who did the proper point because from our point of view, Pope Benedict’s history has been abysmal,” she after stated.

A bombshell report by The New York Occasions in 2010 said that Ratzinger and other church officials unsuccessful to act in the case of a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting up to 200 boys. The Moments investigation said that church officers stopped proceedings from the priest at the behest of Ratzinger. There are so many other stories exactly where Ratzinger safeguarded the priests versus carrying out the correct issue.

And more offensively, Ratzinger was ruthless in his admonishing and punishing of anybody in the church who was LGBTQ+ or an ally. This hatred incorporates his reviews all over HIV and AIDS in the late 1980s. In 1987, even though the virus raged, rumors abound that the Catholic Church may possibly implicitly endorse the use of condoms to aid prevent the unfold of the ailment. It was straight away shot down by Ratzinger who said that this sort of an solution to safeguard gay adult males and gay sex “would end result in at minimum the facilitation of evil.”

At the U.S. Convention of Catholic Bishops in 1987, led by L.A. Archbishop Roger Mahony, who was also implicated in the priest abuse scandal, passed a plan that rejected the use of condoms to assistance avert the distribute of the disorder. This from a professional-everyday living establishment. Can you visualize how numerous lives may well have been saved if the bishops endorsed the use of condoms?

In May of 1999, Ratzinger brutally silenced a priest and nun who ministered to the LGBTQ+ group. This is aspect of what Ratzinger wrote about their attempts, and about our community:

And Benedict was outspoken on his detest of similar-intercourse relationship. In 2012, he famously reported that relationship equality was a danger to humanity’s future. Talking about very same-sexual intercourse relationship, Pope Benedict explained, “This is not a easy social convention, but relatively the fundamental cell of each and every culture. For that reason, insurance policies which undermine the loved ones threaten human dignity and the long run of humanity itself.”

As Pope emeritus, Benedict revealed a paper in 2021 that further more condemned exact-sex relationship, indicating, “We are witnessing a distortion of conscience which has evidently penetrated deeply into sectors of the Catholic persons,” the pope emeritus wrote. “This simply cannot be answered with some little moralism or even with some exegetical reference. The challenge goes further and hence need to be addressed in fundamental terms.”

In his memoirs that were being published in 2016, Benedict talked about the existence of a supposed homosexual lobby that tried to assert ability about him. Benedict, in the ebook, normally takes credit rating for breaking it up. This, in spite of the truth that there had lengthy been rumors that Benedict, who fancied purple Prada exhibits and high-class environment, was gay himself.

When he resigned in 2013, as portion of the directive as to how Benedict would exist just after he still left the papacy, it was agreed that he could go on to have on the white robes, be referred to as “Pope emeritus,” and that he would live with his extensive-time secretary Monsignor Georg Gänswein. To journalist and writer Andrew Sullivan, the latter was a surprising admission.

Sullivan who has prepared about the actuality that Benedict may possibly be homosexual — while claims he may not have acted upon it — questioned the uncommon living arrangement, “So Benedict’s handsome male companion will keep on to are living with him, even though operating for the other Pope in the course of the working day. Are we intended to feel that’s, nicely, a usual arrangement?”

We’ve found countless reverends, clergy and teleevangelists use their pulpit to condemn queers, whilst carrying on similar-intercourse associations guiding shut doorways. Do thou protest much too a great deal, in Benedict’s circumstance, indicate that he also harbored a solution? We’ll in all probability hardly ever know, but what we do know is that his protesting against our local community was harmful and existence-threatening.

When revulsion and exclusion, which is what Father Angelo thought Benedict was all about, incite the masses, virtually and figuratively, it only emboldens those people to despise even extra. It is really hard to desire that Benedict rest in peace, when he left so a great deal animosity, disregard, and divisiveness in his wake.

John Casey is editor at massive of The Advocate.

Views expressed in The Advocate’s impression content are those of the writers and do not essentially characterize the sights of The Advocate or our guardian firm, equalpride.