The peaceful death of Benedict XVI on Saturday in a monastery in the heart of the Vatican gardens forms a striking contrast to the painful, violent or sometimes shrouded in mystery circumstances that marked the deaths of many of his predecessors.
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Here are some examples:
The predecessor of Benedict XVI, John Paul II, died on April 2, 2005 in the Vatican at the age of 84, carried away by the disease which transformed into an ordeal the end of his 26 years at the head of the Catholic Church.
AFP
After two successive hospitalizations and a tracheostomy in February 2005, the state of health of John Paul II had suddenly worsened a few days before his death, following a urinary tract infection, sepsis and cardiac arrest. .
Deprived of speech following the tracheotomy, he had managed to utter a few words in public on March 13, before his return to the Vatican. He then remained silent. For his last Good Friday, he was filmed from behind in his apartments so that the faithful could see him following the Way of the Cross via video.
His pontificate had been marked by the multiple health problems of this former great sportsman, weakened by Parkinson’s disease and by the after-effects of the injuries received during the attack perpetrated by the Turkish extremist Mehmet Ali Agca, on May 13, 1981. in St. Peter’s Square, cancer in the intestine and two fractures, one in the shoulder and one in the femur.
His predecessor, John Paul I, nicknamed “the good pope” or “the smiling pope”, was one of the most ephemeral popes in history: elected in August 1978 at the age of 65, he died 33 days and six hours later, apparently from a heart attack, although no autopsy was conducted to confirm the cause of his death.
AFP
Books have evoked the hypothesis of an assassination, because the pope wanted to put order in the affairs of the Church and in particular in the financial embezzlement of Bishop Paul Marcinkus, at the head of the Vatican bank, suspected at the time of links with the mafia. However, no official investigation has confirmed these suspicions.
Several hypotheses surround the death of Alexander VI, pope from 1492 to 1503. On August 6, 1503, after a dinner with his son Caesar at a cardinal’s house, both were taken by fever. A first hypothesis attributes this malaise to malaria, very present in Rome at that time.
WIKIMEDIA/VATICAN MUSEUM
The other hypothesis is that the pope wanted to get rid of some of his enemies and poisoned the wine himself, accidentally falling into his own trap.
The testimony of Johann Burchard, a relative of the pope present at his death and having left a diary, is striking: “His body had swollen so much that we could not put it in the coffin intended for him. He was thus rolled up temporarily in a carpet, while his apartments were given over to looting”.
Known as the “corpse council,” the posthumous trial of Pope Formosa (891-896) bears witness to the chaos that reigned in ninth-century Rome and the Vatican. In 897, by order of Pope Stephen IV, a sworn enemy of Formosa, his corpse was exhumed, dressed in papal vestments and seated on a throne to be judged. The verdict stipulated that the deceased was not worthy of the pontificate.
WIKIMEDIA/Art of Montor
All his measures and acts were nullified and the orders conferred by him were declared invalid. The papal vestments were torn from his body, the three fingers of his right hand which the pope had used in consecrations were cut off, and the corpse thrown into the Tiber.
The Vatican codifies very precisely the procedure that must be followed at the death of a pope, which confers a key role on the camerlego of the Church, cardinal in charge of the government of the Church in the event of a vacancy of power.
He “must officially note the death of the pontiff”, stipulates the Apostolic Constitution published by John Paul II in 1996. And this in the presence of the master of pontifical liturgical celebrations, ordained prelates and the secretary and chancellor of the Apostolic Chamber. “The latter will write the document or authentic death certificate”, specifies the Constitution.
In the past, the Camerlengo verified the Pope’s death by striking his forehead with a small silver hammer. A tradition that fell into disuse after the death of John XXIII in 1963.