Retired Benedict XVI attends ceremony to create new cardinals

The Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who has been living quietly out of the public eye since resigning the papacy a year ago, made a surprise appearance in a crowded St Peter’s Basilica last Saturday to attend Pope Francis’ first consistory to create new cardinals, writes Robert Mickens. It was the first time the 86-year-old former Pope has appeared at a large public event since Francis succeeded him as Bishop of Rome in March 2013.

“I tell you what the Church needs – it needs you, your collaboration and, above all, your communion,” the Jesuit Pope told 18 men to whom he gave the red hat, as his predecessor looked on. A nineteenth new cardinal – 98-year-old Loris Capovilla, former secretary to John XXIII – was too frail to attend the ­ceremony and will be given his hat by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the college, today in the parish church of Sotto il Monte, the birthplace of John XXIII where the cardinal lives.

Westminster’s archbishop, Vincent Nichols, was among those formally created cardinal at last week’s consistory. Francis told the 18 new men and some 150 other scarlet-robed prelates already in the exclusive college that they must, by “works, desires and prayers”, be men who invoke “peace and reconciliation for people in our times that are suffering because of violence, exclusion and war”. Praying for persecuted Christians, he added: “We must fight against every discrimination!”

At a Mass the next day in St Peter’s, Pope Francis warned the cardinals not to act as if they are part of a royal court with its intrigue and machinations. “A cardinal enters the Church of Rome, my brothers, not a royal court!” the Pope said at the liturgy in St Peter’s Basilica. “May all of us avoid habits and ways of acting typical of a court: intrigue, gossip, cliques, favouritism and partiality.”

For some, the words were a poignant reminder of the Curia infighting portrayed in the so-called VatiLeaks scandal that directly preceded Benedict XVI’s resignation. Benedict was not at the Sunday Mass. During the consistory on Saturday, the former Pope sat to the side of the senior cardinals dressed in a long white papal coat and skullcap. Pope Francis embraced him when he processed into the basilica and again before he left.