ROME – A widely respected octogenarian leader, a man of personal integrity who’s devoted his life to public service, at the end finds himself mired in crisis and controversy, unsure of whether he still has the necessary physical and even spiritual energies to right the ship.
Reluctantly, he makes the painful decision to step aside, allowing the institution he cherishes to change course.
As of this writing, whether that scenario will apply to 81-year-old U.S. President Joe Biden and his Democratic Party remains unclear. However, it was certainly true of Pope Benedict XVI, who stepped down at the age of 85 more than eleven years ago.
The question Democrats might profitably ask right now is this: Are there lessons from the first voluntary papal resignation in roughly 700 years for what might happen should Biden choose to follow Benedict’s example?
All analogies are inexact, so let’s begin with the obvious dissimilarities.
First, Benedict’s resignation announcement on Feb. 11, 2013, was a shock to the world, known in advance only to an extremely small circle of close friends and aides. Afterwards I spoke to one cardinal who had been in attendance at the consistory where Benedict revealed his decision, who described how he was so stunned he simply stayed in his seat for a long stretch of time trying to make sense of it all, until ushers reluctantly asked him to leave so they could set up for the next event.
By way of contrast, should Biden ultimately decide to pull out, by now it would surprise no one … except, perhaps, the president himself.
Second, a growing chorus of Biden’s fellow Democrats are publicly pressuring him to quit, led by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In 2013, no one in the power structure of the Catholic Church was clamoring for Benedict to step aside, at least not out loud.
His decision was a deeply personal one, a point he emphasized in a 2016 interview book with German journalist Peter Seewald, denying anyone had pressured or “blackmailed” him: “If they had tried it, I would not have left, because you don’t leave when you are under pressure to do so,” he said.
Seewald eventually would reveal it was insomnia, not insurrection, which consolidated Benedict’s decision.
Third, should Biden pull out, it would be largely driven by political math suggesting he not only would lose to former President Donald Trump in November, but he could harm the chances of fellow Democrats in down-ticket races. Benedict, of course, didn’t have to worry about reelection, and famously thought not in political cycles but in centuries.
All that stipulated, what could the Biden team nevertheless take away from Benedict’s example?
To begin with, it’s had a lasting effect on Benedict’s own legacy. In effect, he became the Catholic Cincinnatus, an icon of humility who wielded nearly absolute power and freely set it aside for the common good. Biden now has the opportunity to be seen in similar terms, as someone who prioritized service over selfishness to the very end.
In addition, Benedict’s resignation also immediately changed Catholic fortunes, giving the Church a new lease on life in a critical moment.
In early 2013, Catholicism seemed moribund and adrift. Not only had the Church been pounded by a second wave of clerical abuse scandals that washed across Europe beginning in 2010, but the papacy itself had been battered by a series of other calamities and meltdowns, many of them self-inflicted, from the inadvertent rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying traditionalist bishop to the second “Vatileaks” scandal.
At the time, Rome was awash with rumors about an ill-defined but allegedly sinister “gay lobby” exercising occult influence in the Vatican, as well as other behind-the-scenes maneuvers fueled by scheming and ambitious clerics known as corvi, or “crows.” Benedict XVI had appointed three retired prelates, Cardinals Julian Herranz, Josef Tomko and Salvatore De Giorgi, to investigate, and almost every day brought fresh speculation about what bombshells they might uncover.
The month between Feb. 11 and March 12, when the conclave to elect Benedict’s successor began, was full of gloom and doom in media coverage, focusing on declining numbers, mounting scandals, and widespread confusion and anxiety.
Then Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina stepped out onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square on the evening of March 13 wearing white, and the world changed.
Unlike Joseph Ratzinger, who had come into the papacy carrying baggage – he was known as the “German Shepherd,” “God’s Rottweiler,” the “Panzer-Kardinal,” and so on – the relatively unknown Bergoglio had the chance to shape his own narrative, and he did so brilliantly.
First, it was announced that the new pope had taken the name “Francis” after Catholicism’s most iconic saint, and in a clear sign of solidarity with the world’s poor and forgotten. He began by asking the crowd gathered in the square to pray for God’s blessing on him before offering his own blessing, perceived as a gesture of humility.
Over the next few days, he would quickly light up the PR scoreboard in other ways – returning to his Rome hotel to pack his own bag and pay his own bill, declining to live in the papal apartments in favor of the Santa Marta residence on Vatican grounds, and making an impromptu visit to the Vatican’s parish of St. Anne to be mobbed by an adoring crowd.
At the same time, stories began to circulate from Argentina of how the new pope had been a special friend of the residents of Buenos Aires’ infamous slums, the villas miserias, and how he’d spurned a limo and driver in favor of public transportation.
Such was the power of the narrative that it easily steamrolled over any critical question marks, such as an early and abortive attempt to link Francis to his country’s “Dirty War.” The world, led by the media, was in love, and nothing would stop it. The adulation reached a crescendo in December, when Time named Francis “Person of the Year.”
“What makes this pope so important is the speed with which he has captured the imaginations of millions who had given up on hoping for the Church at all,” the magazine said at the time.
In April 2013, shortly after his election, a Gallup poll found that Pope Francis overall had a nearly 60 percent approval rating in the United States, with most of the rest saying they didn’t know enough to have an opinion. His negatives were just 10 percent. By February 2014, his positives had risen to almost 80 percent, an astronomic result that would have guaranteed election should he have been running for anything.
Inevitably, of course, that near-universal affection didn’t last. Eventually Francis had to start to govern, and especially in such a polarized time, his decisions have proven predictably divisive. Today, Francis is perhaps less a sensation than a lightning rod.
However, the good news for the Democrats right now is that they don’t need four years of good vibes – they really only need four months, and the Francis experience suggests it’s possible.
The key conditions would seem to be the following:
- A prolonged negative news cycle, leaving media outlets hungry for something uplifting to report.
- A leader willing to step aside in order to stop the bleeding.
- A new figure who comes without a strong profile, and with the instincts to forge a positive narrative quickly.
So far, condition one clearly is in place. What remains to be seen is whether Biden will deliver number two, and whether his party can summon number three.
Of course, all this suggests a final dissimilarity between Benedict’s historic resignation and Biden’s potential withdrawal: Benedict didn’t act on the basis of short-term political calculations, but in the serene confidence of God’s providence. He also wasn’t driven by a desire to block anyone else’s candidacy, leaving the choice of his successor entirely in the hands of the College of Cardinals and, ultimately, the Holy Spirit.
Still, Democrats might take comfort in the speed with which Catholicism turned a corner, at least in terms of public opinion, eleven years ago – if, that is, their luck is somehow as solid as Francis’s.
