Candid talk from senior cardinal on Pope Francis, Benedict XVI

Cardinal Camillo Ruini thinks Benedict XVI’s resignation was a mistake. Ruini also found himself flummoxed by the Francis pontificate and unsure whether the reign of the late Argentinian pontiff will prove to have done more harm or good.

Ruini said so – in words – in a wide-ranging interview with Italy’s Corriere della sera newspaper that was published late last week.

Ruini, who served the better part of two decades as Pope St. John Paul II’s vicar for the Rome diocese and as president of the Italian bishops’ conference, is more than a venerable figure in the Italian episcopate and senior member of the college of cardinals.

Now 95 years old, he has seen more of the last century than almost anyone else, not only because he lived through it but because he was there for it.

When he gives an opinion about anything – especially about a pope – it is a good idea to take him seriously.

Ruini knows his opinions carry weight, even though he has been retired from active public life since 2008, which is why his candid remarks to the Corriere regarding Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, and Pope Leo XIV are themselves remarkable.

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It probably won’t surprise many leaders to know that Ruini ranked Pope St. John Paul II as maggiore – which is the comparative of grande or “great” – saying “he was a true leader on the world stage.”

Corriere had asked him to rank the popes of his lifetime, and Ruini said it was a tall order.

“For the Church, Ruini said, “it has been a fortunate period, in which various great popes have succeeded one another.”

“I think of Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI,” Ruini said.

“I found myself in difficulty with Pope Francis,” Ruini said in response to a question asking whether the late pontiff had disappointed him. “The change was too great and sudden,” Ruini said.

“More than disappointed,” Ruini said he was “surprised.”

Asked for his measure of the Francis pontificate, whether it did “more good or more harm to the Church,” Ruini said his would be “a complex assessment, with very positive aspects and others much less so.”

“It’s too early to judge which of them prevail,” he said.

Ruini was less circumspect regarding the pontificate of Benedict XVI, especially regarding Benedict’s shocking February 2013 decision to resign the papal office.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” Ruini said in response to the Corriere’s point-blank question whether is was a mistake for Benedict to resign, “it was a mistaken decision, at least it seems so to me.”

“He knew his circumstances better than I did,” Ruini said, “so I don’t want to judge.”

About Benedict as pope, Ruini said the German had been “above all a great theologian.”

“Governance was his weak point,” Ruini said, adding that “real alternatives did not emerge,” as far as could see, during the 2005 conclave (in which it has been widely reported that the man who would eventually become Pope Francis ran second).

About Leo XIV, Ruini said he has “an excellent impression,” though he noted having only one audience with the new pope, very shortly after his election. “I am very happy to have this pope,” Ruini said.

When you’ve made 95 turns around the sun, you get to speak your mind, but Ruini’s willingness to disclose his own to the Corriere was arguably more than the forthrightness that comes with venerable seniority.

He acknowledged things red hats and curial officers – along with the rank and file in the Church’s central governing apparatus and bishops around the world have whispered privately for years: that Benedict’s resignation was a mistake and Francis’s reign was not easy for the Church.

That Ruini offered his sentiments both carefully and clearly, with subtlety but unambiguously, was further proof that clear-eyed acknowledgment of reality is both necessary and possible to offer without verbal fireworks or polemics.

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Both what Ruini said and how he said it were important, in other words, because both together showed that frank speech can be measured and judicious.

The papacy – the papal office – is an impossible burden for anyone who takes it up. Nobody halfway sane should ever want it. It is certain that the all-too-human holders of the office will make mistakes and inevitable that the all-too-human electors of popes will from time to time choose poorly.

These and similar subjects ought not be off-limits, though they oughtn’t be bandied about.

Ruini’s reflections may well make it easier to discuss hard topics, in other words, precisely because the measure of care and judgment he displayed in offering them shows us how.

Follow Chris Altieri on X: @craltieri