Ultimately, the most significant move Benedict made was to resign from the role: In 2013, citing his “advanced age,” he announced that he would step down — the first pontiff in 600 years to do so. The decision ushered in the era of Pope Francis, a reformer who has taken the papacy in a different direction, even as Benedict continued to live in the Vatican and occasionally opine from retirement.
He died Saturday at the age of 95.
His statements on subjects from papal celibacy and Protestantism to sexual abuse and the HIV/AIDS crisis advanced Catholic orthodoxy and a belief in the faith as a bedrock in a changing world.
Here are some of his most significant — and controversial — comments.
“The impression grew steadily that nothing was now stable in the Church, that everything was open to revision”
Benedict was known for suggesting the church of the future could resemble a “mustard seed” — consisting of a smaller core of orthodox believers to serve as a Christian witness in the world, rather than an expansive body that tried to be all things to everyone. The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), the series of meetings of Catholic leaders in the early 1960s to consider the place of the church in the modern world, ushered in major changes intended to ensure the institution’s continuing relevance, including a move away from Latin and toward local languages in the Mass and a greater effort at outreach to people of other denominations and faiths.
Benedict, who as a young priest had served as a theological adviser to Cardinal Josef Richard Frings at Vatican II, later came to believe that the changes had weakened the church.
“The impression grew steadily that nothing was now stable in the Church, that everything was open to revision,” he wrote in his 1988 memoir, “Milestones,” written while he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
He rejected liberation theology in Latin America, and as pontiff, said Protestant communities could not properly be called churches in the Catholic sense of the word — a stance Protestant leaders said set back relations between Christian communities. Benedict also permitted Catholics to celebrate Mass with the Latin Rite that Vatican II had nixed. The decision angered Jews, since one prayer casts Jews as blind to Christian truth.
Francis, Benedict’s successor, reimposed restrictions on the Latin Mass, provoking a backlash among traditionalists.
Benedict, meanwhile, occasionally voiced opinions from retirement in an effort to sway Francis’s decision-making. When Francis was weighing whether to allow married men to become priests in the Amazon region, Benedict defended clerical celibacy in a book published in 2020: “The ability to renounce marriage to place oneself fully at the disposal of the Lord has become a criterion for priestly ministry.”
Francis ultimately backed away from the issue. This year, he called clerical celibacy a “gift.”
“I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts”
When Benedict became pope in 2005, the Catholic Church was grappling with a sex abuse scandal that had rippled across the world and shaken the faith of many adherents. In 2008, Benedict spent six days in the United States, where he met with victims of abuse by Catholic priests and apologized for the abuse. Addressing American bishops, Benedict admitted that church leaders had mishandled abuse allegations and called for spiritual renewal.
“It is your God-given responsibility as pastors to bind up the wounds caused by every breach of trust, to foster healing, to promote reconciliation and to reach out with loving concern to those so seriously wronged,” he said.
Benedict offered a similar message two years later in Ireland, after summoning Irish bishops to Rome to press them about their handling of sex abuse allegations and hold “frank and constructive” discussions about learning from past mistakes.
Benedict apologized for the abuse in a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland in 2010.
“I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them,” he wrote. He directed Irish church leaders to acknowledge the abuse and work to protect minors in the future.
Benedict also drew criticism for claiming that pedophilia among priests was an outgrowth of the 1960s sexual revolution and a symptom of a breakdown of church teaching. “Why did pedophilia reach such proportions?” he asked in a 2019 letter, six years after his resignation. “Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God.”
The pope expressed “profound shame” after a German investigation accused him of “wrongdoing” in his handling of abuse cases while he headed the archdiocese of Munich between 1977 and 1982.
“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem.”
Benedict sparked an uproar in 2009 when he said condoms were not an effective means of fighting HIV and AIDS in Africa and instead exacerbate the epidemic. Speaking to journalists on his flight to Cameroon for a six-day trip, the pope said HIV/AIDS was “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.” Instead, he urged abstinence.
Health workers trying to fight the spread of the condition were not happy. An estimated 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were infected with HIV/AIDS at the time, according to the Guardian.
The pope had claimed on an earlier trip to Africa that condoms were among the forces threatening life on the continent.
“It is of great concern that the fabric of African life, its very source of hope and stability, is threatened by divorce, abortion, prostitution, human trafficking and a contraception mentality,” he said.
Though Francis is seen as a reformer, he has hewed to the official Vatican line prohibiting birth control. During his papacy, the Vatican has partnered with the United Nations to work to eliminate HIV infections among children.
Relations with Muslims and Jews
Benedict had rocky relationships, at times, with members of other faiths.
He angered Jewish leaders when he signed a decree in 2009 that allowed Pope Pius XII, who served from 1939 to 1958, to become a candidate for sainthood. Pius is accused of failing to do enough to stop the Holocaust, and rabbis called on the Vatican to refrain from beatifying him. Benedict also drew ire from Jewish leaders that year for lifting the excommunication of a British bishop, Richard Williamson, who denied that Nazis had killed Jews in gas chambers during the Holocaust. The pope said the Catholic Church rejected antisemitism and called on Williamson to recant his comments.
The moves drew particular scrutiny because the German-born pope had been required to enroll in the Hitler Youth, which indoctrinated young people in Nazi ideology. (He skipped the meetings.)
During a lecture at a German university in 2006, Benedict quoted a Byzantine Christian emperor who claimed that the Muslim prophet Muhammad brought “things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
That quote sparked protests in Muslim countries and the killing of an Italian nun in Somalia. Benedict repeatedly voiced his regret over the speech and emphasized that he respected Islam. But he had already alienated many Muslims. John Paul II, in contrast, is remembered in Muslim communities for his commitment to interfaith dialogue.
Francis has espoused a more expansive vision than Benedict of the church’s role in the world and relations with other faiths. “We who are descended from Abraham, the father of peoples in faith, cannot be concerned merely with those who are ‘our own’ but, as we grow more and more united, we must speak to the entire human community, to all who dwell on this earth,” he told Muslim leaders gathered in Bahrain in November.
On the decision to resign
“My strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited …”
Benedict shocked the church when he unexpectedly announced at a ceremony with cardinals in February 2013 that he would step down as spiritual leader of the worldwide church. Then 85, he said he had “repeatedly examined my conscience before God” and decided he was no longer up to the task of guiding the church in the modern world, “subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith.”
No pope had resigned his office since Gregory XII in 1415. Benedict’s decision is seen as having established a precedent that could make it easier for subsequent pontiffs to give up their roles.
In his final homily as pope, Benedict bemoaned the sometimes “disfigured” face of the Church. “I am thinking in particular of the sins against the unity of the church, of the divisions in the body of the church,” he said.
Anthony Faiola, Michelle Boorstein, Jacqueline L. Salmon, Matthew Hay Brown, Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli contributed to this report.
