The Two Popes

A Review and a Reflection for the New Year

Brainerd Prince

As the sound of the partying outside my window got louder, my soul sunk deeper, even as I
sat engrossed watching The Two Popes on New Year’s Eve. Directed by Fernando Meirelles it
is a biographical movie based on the real lives of Ratzinger or Pope Benedict XVI of Germany
and Bergoglio or Pope Francis of Argentina, and the unique relationship they shared. These
two men held/hold the highest office of the Chair of Saint Peter in the Catholic Church – one
who felt apt for the papacy gave it up and the other who never wanted it reluctantly accepts
to become the current Pope. This movie focuses on how this change of roles takes place in
2013, and how in the process enables these men to address some of their own weaknesses.

Ratzinger was elected Pope in 2005 after the death of Pope John Paul II and resigned in 2013,
after which, Bergoglio gets elected as Pope Francis. Ratzinger is an academic and Bergoglio
an activist. Thus, both had a friendly dislike for each other’s values, and way of life. These are
two very powerful men – one was the then present Pope, Ratzinger, a scholar, head of 1.2
billion Catholics worldwide, who lovingly call him as their ‘papa’ and the other, the future
Pope, the Cardinale of Argentina, Bergoglio, representing the Global South, with a lifelong
experience of activism, who eventually became the Pope in 2013. However, according to the
movie, in 2012, Bergoglio wanted to retire as the bishop and therefore had to get the Pope’s
authorization. In his visit to Rome to get his resignation authorized by Pope Benedict, the two
men have an extended time of interaction in the latter’s summer house and then in the
Vatican City, and it is these conversations which are the highlight of the movie. The two
represented the two ends of a spectrum – academic and activist. But how they strike a
friendship and are open to change and understand each other, to the point of developing
deep respect and love for each other – this the movie aptly captures.
There couldn’t have been a better choice of actors than Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce
as Ratzinger and Bergoglio respectively. Both the actors give a scintillating performance of
these two great men aptly capturing their emotions and motions. It is a movie one can watch
again and again, as the dialogues contain immense wisdom and teaching. In my perspective,
the key insight the entire movie revolves around is about fulfilling the call to serve.
Furthermore, once one obeys the call, one realizes that the calling was to take a chair of
suffering, which includes one’s own shortcomings and mistakes. Thus, finally, one has to
engage in a confession of sins so that one is able to continually hear the call and serve wisely.
After watching it twice, I would like to summarize for us these three insights that not only
struck me the most but I would argue hold the movie together conceptually.

In the Catholic tradition, the call to serve as a priest has huge ramifications. The first
requirement is that you are meant to remain unmarried and a celibate for life and as we are
told, this practice began in the twelfth century. For Bergoglio, this meant giving up his love
for Amalia and to call off the relationship on the day he had planned to get engaged with her.
But it was a clear calling that he experienced. One could say that he even had a supernatural
experience of a call in his random encounter with an outstation priest in a church, who felt
he was sent to meet with Bergoglio. It was a calling to give one’s life to serve people and to
seek their welfare. He was sensitive to this call to serve throughout his life. I think this spirit
of service can be easily forgotten in our capitalist age that promotes values of self-growth and
self-development. All of us need not take vows and become priests, but we can definitely
experience a call to serve and implement that service in our everyday life. Serving can be done
in many ways. But to know in what way we are to serve is to receive the calling. And again,
and again there is this emphasis on ‘listening to God’ in the movie. There are people who
smugly stand up and proclaim how God speaks to them and how they clearly know what he
says. But in this movie, it is shown many times how difficult it is to listen to God and to know
his will. Ratzinger at one point, in frustration shouts, ‘I can no longer sit on the Chair of Saint
Peter. I cannot feel the presence of God. I do not hear his voice; do you understand me? I
believe in God, I pray to God. Silence.’ This confession was the turning point in the movie as
well as in the friendship between these two men. The honest confession that the Pope was
unable to hear the voice of God. Perhaps this is the reality for most of us. When we try to
listen to God, there is silence, like for Ratzinger. But Ratzinger, the German, was not talking
about hearing supernatural voices, or some sort of an audible voice of God. Rather, from his
childhood, he says, he always felt the presence of God. The key to listening to God is to first
feel his presence. Once we are able to recognize him being present with us, then it does not
matter how he speaks, we will surely hear him. Sometimes, it has been donkeys that have
spoken his word, sometimes it has been inanimate objects like the ephod, and other times it
could even be the voice of a human being, like for Ratzinger, the voice of God was precisely
the voice of Bergoglio, which for years he was adamant not to listen to until that meeting.
Often people mistake the voice of God for the scriptural texts that we possess in our
traditions. Christians, for example, often reduce God’s voice to that of the Bible, their
scriptural texts. And use it as a yardstick to measure any other voice. It is based on a lopsided
epistemology that doesn’t allow God to change. What an obnoxious thought – to hold God
captive in our conceptual nets! That is why Bergoglio keeps insisting on change, including God
changing, and often we miss hearing God’s voice because we have not changed. Change is
not compromise – a strong lesson from this movie. On the other hand, for other traditions,
like the Hindu traditions, the voice of God is primarily through the Guru’s voice. While this is
closest to what Ratzinger finally achieves in hearing God’s voice in Bergoglio’s, one needs to
be prudent to discern the many voices around us. But the lesson is that God’s voice follows
his presence.

On the other hand, for Bergoglio, he was hearing his own voice and mistaking it for God’s
voice. He was so sure of his activism for God that he became inconsiderate to the people
around him. It is hugely possible even for us to hear our own voice in our head and mistake it
for God’s voice. Similar to Bergoglio, who thought it was best to shut down the mission at the
time of persecution, but brought so much pain to so many people with that decision. Later he
confesses that it was his pride and ego that interpreted God’s voice in that manner. This is
the fate of religious zealots and fundamentalists. They hear their own logic, rationality,
understanding, and quote a few verses to support from the scriptures and call it God’s voice.
There is a great danger here, because it reduces God’s voice to ‘the common sense of the
common good’. The problem is with the inability to see into the future, all our understandings
of the good and the beautiful are nothing but ‘filthy rags’ and our mind or manas becomes
our greatest enemy, unworthy of being trusted. Once again, we need God’s presence to
validate our understanding of his voice.

Even the best of us, including Popes, find it extremely difficult to listen to God. One has to
develop the practice of listening to God. Often God’s voice contradicts our voice and the many
other voices around us. Ratzinger says, ‘I think perhaps I could not hear him, not because he
was withdrawing from me, but because he was saying, “Go, my faithful servant”.’ Here, the
‘Go’ refers to leaving the papacy but Ratzinger is portrayed as someone who held on to the
Papal chair, although with good motives. But the voice of God for him was to leave and go!
Something that would be against common sense, good sense, and even ministry sense. His
holy reasons for doing what he was doing, were not good enough for him to remain as Pope.
As God’s Rottweiler, as he was called, Ratzinger was defending Church dogma, and the ‘truth’,
but people were leaving the Church because the Church had become irrelevant to the times.
The need of the hour was not to defend some historical truth, rather it was for the Church to
change and adapt to the fast-changing context of the twentieth-century. Therefore, there was
a complete mismatch between Ratzinger and the spiritual needs of his epoch. And his
unwillingness to leave and go, had made God silent in his life. God had spoken and because
he had not yet obeyed, he did not hear the voice of God.

Therefore, it appears that listening to God entails a few requisites: Firstly, it requires us to not
assign God’s voice to any one thing, including the scriptures and holy people. Allow God to be
God and be open to listen without having any rigid understandings about how he will speak.
Secondly, listening to God must be preceded by being able to experience his presence. Often,
we can understand what presence means, when we experience absence or the lack of
presence. Experiencing the presence of God is not a universal experience, it is a unique
experience fine-tuned to each one of us. Rajeev is all our friend, but each one of us has a
unique friendship with Rajeev, and can experience his presence differently, sometimes even
in opposite ways. For example, Rajeev’s four-year old can feel his father’s presence when he
is in his sight, and he is holding him. But his best friend Dinesh, does not need Rajeev to be in
his sight or be held by him, that would make it very uncomfortable if not downright creepy.
For Dinesh, it is Rajeev’s sarcastic comments on his Facebook statuses that remind him that
Rajeev is always there for him, one text away. For Rajeev’s parents it is the Saturday skype
calls, and the money that is deposited on the first of every month that reminds them that
their son is always there for them. These experiences cannot be reduced to some grand
principle universally applicable to all friends of Rajeev, how much ever one likes! It is the same
with God. Each relationship that experiences presence is categorically different from others,
even when they experience the same person. I have no advice on how you can experience
the presence of God, except by saying that you need to be able to recognize him, even as you
reflect on how he has been with you in the past. Finally, a condition for listening to God is
obedience. Take for example, you asking your partner a direct question about which shirt to
wear to the nightclub. He replies and explicitly tells you to wear the black shirt. But you don’t
like the black shirt, so you continue asking many following questions: what about the blue
shirt? Can I wear the red trousers, it will go well with the blue shirt? What about the yellow
half-sleeved shirt? And all you get is silence. The reason for the silence is not because your
partner is no longer interested in you and is withdrawing from you, but precisely because he
has spoken, and you are not obeying his voice. All you then get is silence. Similarly, when we
have an explicit answer from God, then unless we obey and act on it, we hinder hearing the
voice of God. Perhaps, these preconditions will help us to identify the unique still voice of God
in our own lives, so that it will direct us in all our ways to serve even in this new year.

The chair of Peter, the calling to serve, is a chair of suffering. Once we have clarified the
particular call to serve for our lives, we quickly realize that along with the power and authority
that call brings, it primarily brings with it suffering. We not only are to carry the suffering of
people around us, even as we serve as instruments of healing, but we are also exposed to our
own weaknesses and shortcomings. Perhaps, this is the greater inner turmoil, having to
consciously live with our sins. Often it can be overwhelming to see that this beautifully
created world has become marred with sin and the suffering is suffocating. Young children
getting abused. Women and even men assaulted. Communities living for generations in
poverty. Sickness. Accidents. And a million other things that snatch away the beauty of life.
Those heeding the call to serve, necessarily shoulder the burden of these sufferings. Worse
still, when we are complicit to it. The dark night of the soul. ‘Perhaps the path appears straight
when we look back at it. On the way we often feel lost.’ Ratzinger summarizes. Called to serve
and lead and feeling lost all through the way is definitely not the way to live and work. One
wouldn’t be allowed to serve in such a condition in the secular world. However, it occurs to
me that in the spiritual world, suffering is a prerequisite for serving. One necessarily feels
unworthy and unsuited for the job. But perhaps it is in weakness that sufficient grace is
granted and power made perfect. Bergoglio had to learn this the hard way. Being the head of
the Jesuit Order in Argentina, when the regime changed, he felt that protecting those under
him was more important than the service the Order was doing in different mission stations.
But some priests refused to listen to him or heed to his order to stop work. He kicks them out
of the Order, and they get taken away to police brutality. One of the priests was his own
teacher. Where was Christ in all this? He asks. The dark night of the soul. When the regime
changed once again, Bergoglio was accused of being a hardliner, right winged, egotistical and
he was exiled. Internal crisis. Two years of introspection, led him to change. He learnt to listen.
To keep doing the work, even as the work on him was being done. He is authentically
empathetic with those whose confessions he hears. He coaches a football team and teaches
the footballers to play as a team. He tells them that we all have a God-complex. ‘I’ll be an idol,
be loved, be the Lord. It’s not like that. There’s only one Lord. Up there.’ So, I want you to
pass the ball. But when the turn came for him to consider being the Pope, he bluntly refuses,
because of his own sins and sufferings. It is now Ratzinger’s turn to turn to Bergoglio and he
says something very interesting, ‘you must remember that, uh, you are not God. In God we
move, and live, and have our being. We live in God, but we are not of it. You are only human.
But… there he is. Human. [pointing to the picture of Jesus with a nail mark on his hand in the
Sistine Chapel] Yeah. If you will allow me, my son, you must believe in the mercy that you
preach.’

This leads us to the final insight, which helps us overcome suffering and sin and empowers us
to serve. So, what do we do with sin and suffering even as we try to fulfil the call to serve? Do
we allow suffering to stop our service? When Bergoglio says he cannot become the Pope
because of his sins, Ratzinger asks him, ‘do you think your sins disqualify you, but we are all
sinners’, and then says, ‘now, please, hear my confession.’ The holy father, the Pope, the head
of the Church, the heir of Saint Peter, begins to kneel and seeks confession. In doing this the
Pope demonstrates that even he, the head of the Church, needs to confess. Confession of sins
must be an everyday practice of all who serve. In serving one sins in many ways. The
sacraments of confession come alive, when performed in the right spirit and with a spirit of
learning. True confession forgives and seeks forgiveness.

However, to forgive or be forgiven does not necessarily mean to forget. But when the memory
of suffering continues to haunt and torment, perhaps the sense of being forgiven makes its
lashes less bitter. We will learn to cope, so that we can get on with our calling to serve.