A New Book about Pope Francis

The work has not yet been translated into English, but an extract was published by the Spanish daily newspaper ABC and used by Infobae, on Easter Sunday, March 31. The Pope revisits in detail his relationship with his predecessor, with whom he lived for close to ten years at the Vatican, until the death of the Pope Emeritus on December 31, 2022. He mentions in particular the election of Benedict XVI.

Francis speaks of the situation of the 2005 conclave and explains that the cardinals maneuvered to try to prevent the election of Joseph Ratzinger. He recalls that “the cardinals swear not to reveal what happens in the conclave, but that the Popes have license to relate it”--which is particularly shocking coming from the Pope’s mouth.

The Pope explains: “It happened that I had 40 votes of 115 in the Sistine Chapel.” This threshold could have constituted a level sufficient to “block the candidacy of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, because if they had continued to vote [for me], he would not have been able to attain the two-thirds vote necessary to be elected Pope,” continued Francis.

El Sucesor continues: “The maneuver consisted in presenting my name, to block the election of Ratzinger and then to negociate a different third candidate. They told me later that they did not want a ‘foreign’ [non-Italian] Pope. It was a real maneuver. The idea was to block the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.”

Then Francis puts the maneuver into perspective: “The conclave began on Monday, April 18, 2005. The first vote took place in the afternoon. This operation took place in the second or third round of voting, on Tuesday, April 19, in the morning. When I realized it in the afternoon, I told a Latin American cardinal, the Colombian Darío Castrillón [Hoyos]:

“’Don’t joke around with my candidacy, because now I’m going to say that I’m not going to accept, okay? Leave me be.’ And it was then that Benedict was elected,” Francis stated. The Pope then assures that Joseph Ratzinger was his candidate because “he was the only one who could be Pope at that time.”

Benedict XVI: A Transitional Pope for Francis

Pope Francis explains his appreciation for the pontificate of his predecessor: “After the revolution of John Paul II, who had been a dynamic Pontiff, very active, with initiative, who traveled... there was a need for a Pope who could maintain a healthy balance, a transitional Pope.”

And he then admits: “If they had chosen someone like me, who makes a lot of trouble, I would not have been able to do anything. At the time, that would not have been possible. I came out of it happy. Benedict XVI was a man who followed the new style. And that wasn’t easy for him, was it? He met with a lot of resistance within the Vatican.”