Pope Francis may be the progressive champion Catholic Church needs

I wasn’t sorry to see Pope Benedict XVI resign the papacy on February 28, 2013. But I doubt he left voluntarily. The Holy See — a small state in the belly of Italy — has a long history of high intrigue. Its sovereign territory is Vatican City — a much diminished real estate from its heyday. A history of coups and murders within the Holy See abounds. Dozens of popes have either been “martyred” or murdered by poisoning, strangulation, mutilation, or starvation. Some were forced to flee, resign, or abdicate. The papacy isn’t for the faint-hearted. The official story is Pope Benedict was the first to “voluntarily” resign since Pope Gregory XII in 1415. But I am glad Pope Francis succeeded him.

Pope Benedict, the rigid German conservative ideologue, succeeded the equally conservative but amiable Pope John Paul II upon the latter’s death in 2005. Pope John Paul’s world was completely distorted by his deep distaste of communism in his native Poland. He and Cardinal Joseph Aloysius Ratzinger, Pope Benedict’s pre-papal name, were identical ideological twins. Both were staunch biblical literalists who abhorred reform and tightly maintained the Church’s byzantine secrecy.