Page 2 - Second Papacy News Today

Training. >> nepotism tended to produce a group of wealthy para sites who lived like grandese, who were also clergy. >> he was incompetent. he was morally compromised in many ways. >> benedict was up to his neck in robbery and murder. he was using his position to gain wealth at the expense of the people of rome. >> by the year 1044, the cardinals are fed up. they decide the church needs a real spiritual and political leader, something must be done. >> the holiest priest in rome came to him and s...

Gregory vi. then the really scandalous thing happened. benedicts lady love decided not to marry him after all and he decided he wanted the papacy back. gregory vi said, no, im pope. sylvester iii who is still in the village said, dont forget about me and now we have three popes. we have three popes and there is no one to declare which one is the most legitimate. >> benedicts, sylvesters and gregorys factions all fight in the streets of rome over who is the rightful heir to the papal throne, and ...

Over the church, the french king lays the ground work for what will be the papacys most notorious resignation by undermining its very foundation. >> peter is buried on the vatican hill and st. peters basilica is built over his tomb. popes are seen as inheriting that charisma and that role, standing in for the apostle. his tomb is the foundation charter for the papacy. >> but king phillip demand that pope clement leave the legacy of st. peter in rome and move the papacy to operate under his thumb...

Resignation was a devastating comment on the last or six years of his predecessor. a flight in the face of the whole theology of the papacy as it had evolved in modern times. the notion that john paul had propagated that the papacy was a cross which was laid on your shoulders and you could not shake it off. ben detective sa benedict said well, its a job and if you cant do it, let somebody else try. >> narrator: by resigning in old age, pope benedict xvi made a clear statement about the divinity ...

Which is, of course, against the canyons. >> in the 11th century, conclaves had not yet been invented. popes are often chosen by brute force or nepotism. >> buying church power was considered one of the worst sins there was, so the fact that he had actually sold the papacy in return for money was appalling to everyone. >> for the first time in recorded history, a pope resigns in exchange for money, which catapults the papacy into the world of dirty politics. >> the papacy becomes a pawn in the p...

For successive popes to say im 80 years old, im not going to stay until i fall down dead in this office. thats thinking more like a ceo than anything else. >> a lighting from the helicopter, francis thanks the pilots and then his predecessor goes toward him to embrace him. this is a historic moment. >> its not any kind of precedent. benedicts resignation, he really did do it voluntarily. >> narrator: today pope kbbenedt xvi lives in a quiet apartment in the vatican. he has passed to pope francis...

Elect him pope. >> in the 13th century you had great succession of reforming popes, politicians, but this is not how a pope should be. so what they did was elect a pope who was as unworldly as you could possibly hope for, a hermit. they called him celestine, the heavenly one. >> celestine v does not want to be pope. hed rather be praying off alone by himself, and he goes to do this papacy rather reluctantly. >> it is not super clear that he even exactly knew what was going on. it is not clear ho...

1294, king philip iv of france is determined to reassert his power over the papacy. but the new hope, boniface iv refuses to give in to the greed even monarch. >> philip iv comes to a time when warfare is brought by purchasing armies. he needs more money. >> the church is very wealthy. >> so when bon bon dies, king philip ensures that a pope who will give him what he wants is elected. >> expressed very clearly to the college of cardinals that he preferred this particular french candidate. it was...

And for having banquets that went on for days and for spending church money in order to take care of themselves. >> but the avignon papacy worked. it is in southern france. its of more central to europe than the italian peninsula. it was efficient. it had a decent bureaucracy. theres actually a good case for the avignon papacy. a big problem though -- it doesnt have the tomb of peter, and whats the point of a pope who doesnt sit at the tomb of peter? >> despite being miles from the spiritual fou...

Celestine into siphoning him church money and land. but after celestines resignation, the new pope, boniface viii, is not so easily manipulated. >> when boniface viii became pope, he saw the french influence as something that had gone way, way out of bounds and so he positioned himself as the anti-france pope. so phillip iv and boniface had these very real clash of powers. boniface began to generate some very, very harsh language about the power of the papacy. here is a letter that he wrote to p...