The last day of 2022 began with a mourning that shook the Catholic Church and all its faithful. The Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI passed away at the age of 95: the news had been in the air for several days, after Bergoglio had asked for a “special prayer” for his predecessor, struggling with serious health problems. Many messages of condolence arrived from every corner of the world, but there are also those who have dusted off the so-called “forgotten prophecy” Of Ratzinger on the future of the Church. This prophecy was pronounced more than 50 years ago: it was the 1969 when the then professor of theology concluded a series of radio lectures arguing that the Church of the future would be resizedwith far fewer followers, little influence in political choices, irrelevant from a social point of view, humiliated and forced to start again from the origins. If the Church were able to go through what Ratzinger defined as an “enormous upheaval”, then it could find itself and above all be reborn “simplified and more spiritual”.

“We will soon have priests reduced to the role of social workers and the message of faith reduced to a political vision. All will seem lost, but at the right time, precisely in the most dramatic phase of the crisis, the Church will be reborn. It will be smaller, poorer, almost catacomb-like, but also holier. Because it will no longer be the Church of those who seek to please the world, but the Church of those faithful to God and his eternal law. The rebirth will be the work of a small remnant, apparently insignificant yet indomitable, having gone through a process of purification. Because this is how God works. Against evil, a small flock resists” (Benedict XVI, Pope).

Carlo Franza