Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the keynote speaker at the Vatican Conference on the Traditional Latin Mass in October 1998, seven years before he became Pope Benedict XVI, whose funeral Pope Francis will conduct Thursday in St. Peter.
Two friends and I, media and congressmen in our twenties, saved money and vacation time to fly to Rome for this event, celebrating the tenth if the local bishop allowed it.
We arrived about an hour after Ratzinger’s speech, having been acquainted with how incredibly unpleasant it was to travel to Europe before the age of electronic tools. We were devastated by our poor planning, we missed the man we had come to. So we went for a walk through the streets of Rome, admiring all of it.
Wandering aimlessly, having no idea which Via we were taking, we passed a priest who looked strikingly like a man of his time. “No way,” my friends said after I asked them if it was him. Why would Cardinal Ratzinger be alone on this street?
I wasn’t going to let go and ran back to the white-haired man disguised as a priest, simply saying his name out loud with a matter mark. “Yes?” He couldn’t have been more gracious. My friends and I explained that we had come to Rome from the United States to attend the Latin Mass celebrations and had missed his lecture.
![People praying as the body of Pope Benedict XVI rest in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican, January 3, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/pope-benedict-1.jpg?w=1024)
He was surprisingly gentle, the opposite of Ratzinger’s caricatures as a Rottweiler. He spoke to us in perfect English, intrigued by the proven fact that three young boys had come all the strategy to Rome for a Latin Mass conference.
At the end of our conversation, he asked if we would really like his blessing, a straightforward answer. We knelt on the pavement and absorbed an attractive prayer in Latin for our spiritual health and well-being. Then we said goodbye, still in awe of what had just happened.
We did not have a camera or perhaps a pen amongst us, which I regret very much. The memory of meeting the future Pope Benedict has not been captured anywhere but our minds – unthinkable today. Nevertheless it was a special time for those of us who are attached to the traditional Latin Mass and the sacraments.
Fast forward to Benedict, who became pope in 2005 and issued a document in 2007 that liberalized the use of the traditional Latin Mass and sacraments that existed before Vatican II. It modified the liturgical world, and young priests and lay people enthusiastically embraced the type of the Mass known to Catholics since the time of Pope St. tradition has grow to be the default.
Mockingly, this was the Benedict generation – young Catholics were finding recent spiritual nourishment in the older books of worship.
Unfortunately, the current pope will not be a fan of traditional Catholicism or the adherents of tradition. Strict restrictions have been imposed in recent months consequently of a decree by Pope Francis aimed toward eradicating the permissions for the Latin Mass introduced by Pope Benedict.
This week, Pope Benedict’s longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, told Guido Horst, editor-in-chief of the Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost, that Francis reversal decision his predecessor’s permissions “broke Pope Benedict’s reading heart.” Benedict’s intention, he said, “was to assist those who had just found a house in the Old Mass to search out inner peace, to search out liturgical peace.”
![According to his longtime secretary, Pope Francis' decision to revoke Benedict's permission for the Latin Mass](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/pope-francis.jpg?w=1024)
Time will tell whether the death of Pope Benedict on December 31 will open the door for Pope Francis to subvert many other traditional customs, beliefs and beliefs, or whether he’ll finally realize that Catholics who actually attend Mass are usually not big fans of the revolution. Francis style.
On the other hand, all this will likely be debatable in the case of the 86-year-old Pope in a wheelchair. The one walk in the park for the future is: dust you’re and mud you’ll return.
Kenneth J. Wolfe is a contributor to the traditional Catholic blog Rorate Caeli.