For better or for worse, it remains the definitive moment for the Catholic Church of our time – the morning of February 11, 2013, when in the presence of the Cardinals gathered for the Consistory Benedict XVI unexpectedly began reading aloud in Latin a document simply called Declaratio. The consequences of that utterance have been and still are enormous.
Many assumptions have been made about what Benedict actually did that day. We would do well to go back to it, however we may feel about it, and re-evaluate what happened, paying attention to the facts, as well as brushing up on our Latin.
Fact One: Pope Benedict spoke in Latin.
In 2016, Peter Seewald asked Benedict in the book-interview Last Conversations to explain the choice of Latin.
Seewald: When and by whom was the text written that announced your resignation?
Benedict: I wrote it. I cannot say exactly when, but at most two weeks prior.
Seewald: Why in Latin?
Benedict: Because one does such an important thing in Latin. Furthermore, Latin is a language I know well so that I can write it in an elegant manner. I could have also written in Italian, of course, but there was the danger that I would make some mistakes.
So, Benedict affirms that he wrote in Latin because this statement was 1) important and 2) so important that he dare not risk making any mistake in it. Hold that thought.
Fact Two: The vernacular versions of the Declaratio published on the Vatican website distorted what Benedict said in Latin.
Much ink has been spilt on this question elsewhere, but the most obvious indisputable example of this distortion is that the terms munus and ministerium were used interchangeably in a way unfaithful to the original pronouncement of Benedict in Latin, and in the German version the two terms – Amt for munus and Dienst for ministerium – were actually reversed. The vernacular versions reprinted by the world media were simply not accurate translations of what Benedict XVI actually said that morning. This is all old news; among others, Antonio Socci extensively examined this question in his 2018 book The Secret of Benedict XVI: Why He Is Still Pope.
Continue reading at Nicholas Owen’s Substack