Benedict – an intellectual and undiplomatic pope

Pope Benedict XVI, the retired prelate of the Catholic Church who served as the head of the Church from 2005 until his surprise resignation in 2013, now 86 is seriously ill. Known as a conservative intellectual and rigorous theologian he was not as popular as his predecessor John Paul 11 and caused controversies with his comments about homosexuality being an ecological disaster, his complicity in the cover up of child abusing priests, support for a Holocaust-denying Bishop and his antipathy towa