Catholics worldwide are mourning the loss of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who occupied the Chair of Saint Peter from 2005 until 2013. He passed away on New Year’s Eve at the age of 95. More than 100,000 have visited St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City since Monday to pay their respects to the former pontiff, whose mortal remains lie in state there until Wednesday evening.
Born Joseph Ratzinger on April 16, 1927 in Bavaria, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1951 and served as a peritus (expert advisor) at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. His career included time alternately as a university professor, archbishop, and cardinal, and he was a celebrated author.
He was the first pope in 700 years to abdicate; normally a pope remains in office until death. Prior to Benedict XVI, Gregory XII had resigned in 1415 during the Great Western Schism to resolve a dispute over who was the legitimate successor of Saint Peter. Pope Benedict cited age and deteriorating strength as his reasons for stepping away from the physical and mental demands of the papacy. After resigning he took up residence at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican, where he breathed his last in the closing hours of 2022.
The Vatican Press Office announced that Pope Francis will preside over Benedict’s Requiem Mass on Thursday, January 5, at 9:30 a.m. Rome time. Following the funeral, he will be laid to rest in the Grottos under Saint Peter’s Basilica, in the tomb where his predecessor Pope John Paul II was buried prior to his beatification in 2011.
Several items will be buried with him, notes the press release, including his episcopal Pallia (a papal religious garment), commemorative coins and medals, and a rogito – a written summary of highlights from the years of his papacy.
Those highlights are sure to include his reputation as a conservative “in line with the politics of his predecessor,” as ABC News reports. Some claim he was even more hard-nosed than John Paul II. He enraged Muslims in 2006 by criticizing Muhammad, removed restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass in 2007, and upheld time-honored Catholic teaching against abortion and sodomy throughout his eight years as pope.
Benedict also confronted the clerical sex abuse scandal in the Church, meeting with victims and, during the last two years of his pontificate, defrocking nearly 400 priests. He would later speak out, angering many by blaming the plague of abuse on the sexual revolution of the 1960s. However, the last year of his life was marred by results of an investigation commissioned by the Munich archdiocese. It accused him of helping to cover up for several pedophiliac priests while he was archbishop there in the 1980s. In February he issued an ambiguous apology without acknowledging personal culpability.
The Green Pope
Regardless, now that Benedict has passed on, major media insist that he was a conservative “at odds with the modern world,” as described by Mathew Schmalz, professor of religious studies at Holy Cross College. Yet in many areas the pope emeritus was more closely aligned with his left-leaning successor, Pope Francis.
Benedict’s radical environmentalism earned him the appellation “The Green Pope” from mainstream media, so dedicated was he to supporting the myth of man-made climate change. In 2007 he announced his plans to transform the Vatican into the world’s first so-called carbon neutral state, authorizing the Vatican bank to purchase carbon credits by funding a reforestation project in Hungary. (The trees would supposedly offset Vatican carbon emissions, but the forest never materialized.)
The following year he won the Euro Solar Prize for blanketing the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall with 2,400 solar panels, and later he would introduce a hybrid pope-mobile as his thumbs up to electric vehicles.
He adopted a save-the-earth theme for the 2010 World Day of Peace, stating in his published message words that could easily have come from the pen of Pope Francis or Klaus Schwab: “It is becoming more and more evident that the issue of environmental degradation challenges us to examine our life-style and the prevailing models of consumption and production, which are often unsustainable from a social, environmental and even economic point of view.”
In an obvious plug for world government under the United Nations, he endorsed an “internationally-coordinated management of earth’s resources” and insisted that “concern for the environment calls for a broad global vision of the world; a responsible common effort to move beyond approaches based on selfish nationalist interests towards a vision constantly open to the needs of all peoples.”
By his definition, those “selfish” interests include national defense, so he further declared, “In this broader context one can only encourage the efforts of the international community to ensure progressive disarmament and a world free of nuclear weapons.”
Pope of the New World Order
It wasn’t the first time Benedict played the globalist. He had pegged himself a UN disciple from the earliest days of his pontificate, announcing in his first Christmas message as pope:
Men and women of today, humanity come of age yet often still so frail in mind and will, let the Child of Bethlehem take you by the hand! Do not fear; put your trust in him! The life-giving power of His light is an incentive for building a new world order based on just ethical and economic relationships…. A united humanity will be able to confront the many troubling problems of the present time, from the menace of terrorism to the humiliating poverty in which millions of human beings live, from the proliferation of weapons to the pandemics and the environmental destruction which threaten the future of our planet. [Emphasis added.]
“New World Order” is a catchphrase used for decades by globalists like President Joe Biden, former President George H.W. Bush, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to indicate tyrannical world government under the auspices of the United Nations.
Benedict’s use of the term was not mere coincidence. In 2008 he addressed the UN General Assembly and “praised the world body despite its militant secularism,” noted Dennis Behreandt for The New American. “The pope began by inexplicably lauding the UN’s coercive nature, and he went on to praise the UN’s concept of human rights — both of which are in measure feared and scorned by many religious peoples.”
Benedict ramped up support of the pagan organization in his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate by blatantly calling for integration of the United Nations and international financial institutions so they could “acquire real teeth” to “manage the global economy,” to “bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace,” and to “guarantee the protection of the environment,” among a long list of other collectivist goals. This so-called conservative insisted on “a social order that at last conforms … to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations.”
Yes, Benedict actually invoked the godless United Nations Charter, which — unlike the founding documents of the United States, which are based on the premise that rights come from God — leaves out any mention of the Creator. “Whereas the U.S. Constitution creates a government with strictly limited and defined powers,” explains The John Birch Society (JBS), “the UN Charter establishes the framework for expansive global governance towards one world government.”
Though the document pledges signatories to work toward maintaining “international peace and security,” JBS provides a timeline of abuses that reveal the true purpose of the organization. Repeatedly since it was founded in 1945 have so-called “peacekeeping troops” of the United Nations used violence to oust anti-communist regimes from various countries and impose communist dictatorships.
Perhaps that is why various world leaders who support globalist aims are now paying tribute to the deceased former pontiff. Biden issued a statement in which he recalled their meeting during the pope’s 2008 visit to the United States in which Benedict said that “the need for global solidarity is as urgent as ever.”
Germany’s president Frank-Walter Steinmeier gushed over “the election of a Pope from the home of the [Protestant] Reformation,” calling it an “important signal” to the world. Other world government proponents such as Britain’s King Charles, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Italian President Sergio Mattarella also praised the former pontiff.
In his first public comments after the death of Benedict, Pope Francis — who regularly stumps for global governance and radical environmentalism — expressed gratitude for “all the good he accomplished” during his papacy.
