Given his seclusion, it is hard to know what Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI thinks about what is going on around him, but it is safe to say that the last few weeks must have been painful. His fellow Germans are now defiantly setting out towards a national synod which will damage their communion with the Universal Church, despite public warnings from Pope Francis himself.
As pope, Benedict advanced an authentic Christian environmentalism, but he never imagined that what appeared to be pagan ecological rituals – coram Pontifice (before the pope) – would arrive on his doorstep in the Vatican gardens on the eve of the Amazon synod.
