There’s some speculation that Pope Benedict (Joseph Ratzinger) resigned to cleanse the church of what’s been called “The Filth”: “A report Benedict himself commissioned into the state of the Curia landed on his desk in January [2012]. It revealed that ‘The Filth’ — or more specifically, the pedophile priest scandal — had entered the bureaucracy. . . .
The Filth has been corroding the soul of the Catholic Church for years, and the reason is the power-grabbing ineptitude and secrecy of the Curia — which failed to deal with the perpetrators. Now the Curia itself stands accused of being part of The Filth.
“Benedict realises the Curia must be reformed root and branch. He knows this is a mammoth task. “He is too old, and too implicated, to clean it up himself. He has resigned to make way for a younger, more dynamic successor, untainted by scandal — and a similarly recast Curia.
“Benedict was not prepared to wait for his own death to sweep out the gang who run the place.
“In one extraordinary gesture, by resigning, he gets rid of the lot of them.”
