Report: Ex-pope Benedict XVI hits out at critical cardinal


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Accra, Sept. 20 – (DPA/GNA) – Former pope
Benedict XVI has sharply rebuked a cardinal who criticized him for resigning,
according to private correspondence leaked Thursday by German tabloid newspaper
Bild.

Some Catholic conservatives lament the turn
taken by the Vatican under Benedict XVI’s successor Francis, who is widely seen
as less strict about enforcing church doctrine.

“I can very well

Accra, Sept. 20 – (DPA/GNA) – Former pope
Benedict XVI has sharply rebuked a cardinal who criticized him for resigning,
according to private correspondence leaked Thursday by German tabloid newspaper
Bild.

Some Catholic conservatives lament the turn
taken by the Vatican under Benedict XVI’s successor Francis, who is widely seen
as less strict about enforcing church doctrine.

“I can very well understand the
deep-seated pain that the end of my papacy has inflicted on you and many
others,” Benedict XVI wrote in November to a German cardinal, Bild said.

“But for some people and – it seems to me
– also for you, the pain has turned into an anger that no longer merely
concerns my resignation, but extends increasingly to my person and my papacy as
a whole,” it added.

Bild did not name the German cardinal, but he
is believed to be Walter Brandmueller, an outspoken conservative critic of Pope
Francis.

Brandmueller is one of four cardinals who, in
2016, openly challenged Francis’ decision to slightly relax rules banning
remarried divorcees from taking the sacrament of Holy Communion.

Writing to the German cardinal, Benedict also
said: “A papacy itself is now being devalued and melted into the sorrow
about the situation in which the Church currently finds itself.”

It is unclear to what “situation”
the retired pope was referring.

While he remains a cult figure among
conservative critics of Francis, Benedict XVI has always avoided criticism of
his successor.

Francis is now facing a crisis connected to
multiple clergy sex abuse scandals.

GNA


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