No one can apply to be pope of the catholic church.

Technically, all adult Catholics can become Pope. But realistically it's just one of the cardinals, which means you need to become a bishop first, which means you need to become a priest first, which means you need to be celibate (x). This guy has a wife, according to the article, so he cannot become a Pope.

(x) this is technically not true for some Anglican orders that later became Catholics? Maybe? (I never remember the rules of the ordinariate.) So maybe he could first become a priest in Anglican Church, then switch to Catholicism, then become a bishop, then a Cardinal, then a Pope? It's a long shot though.

edit: ahhh the married priests in Ordinariate cannot become bishops. So he would need to have first his marriage annulled I guess.

Correct. In fact, even to be a bishop you have to state as part of the ritual that you do not wish to be a bishop. (Many do of course.)

(Am off to read the article now. :) )

You just have to apply to be a priest, then work your way up by writing essays defending pedophiles raping children, blaming it on the gays and hippies, then protect pedophile rapist priests, and reassign them all over the world to rape more children without consequences, until they vote you in as Pope and reassign you to the Vatican.

>In a 2019 essay, retired Pope Benedict XVI attributed the Catholic Church's sex abuse crisis primarily to the 1960s sexual revolution and a collapse in moral theology, while acknowledging that past church law provided "undue protection" to accused clergy. Critics condemned the essay as a deflection of blame, ignoring systemic cover-ups, while independent reports later implicated him in mishandling abuse cases in Munich by failing to discipline priests and, in cases such as Peter Hullermann, allowing the transfer of abusers to active parish ministry. Read the full details at PBS NewsHour.

Retired Pope's Essay on Sex Abuse Raises Eyebrows, Contradicts Pope Francis

https://www.voanews.com/a/retired-popes-essay-on-sex-abuse-r...

>Retired Pope Benedict XVI has published an analysis on the Catholic Church's clergy sex abuse scandal, blaming it on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and church laws that protected priests.

Pope Benedict XVI implicated in report on sexual abuse in German diocese

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/pope-benedict-xvi-implica...

>BERLIN (AP) — A long-awaited report on sexual abuse in Germany's Munich diocese on Thursday faulted retired Pope Benedict XVI's handling of four cases when he was archbishop in the 1970s and 1980s. The law firm that drew up the report said Benedict strongly denies any wrongdoing.

The findings were sure to reignite criticism of Benedict's record more than a decade after the first, and until Thursday only, known case involving him was made public.

The archdiocese commissioned the report from law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl nearly two years ago, with a mandate to look into abuse between 1945 and 2019 and whether church officials handled allegations correctly. The law firm examined church files and spoke to witnesses.

Top church officials weren't informed of the results ahead of publication. The current archbishop — Cardinal Reinhard Marx, a prominent reformist ally of Pope Francis — was faulted in two cases.

Marx's predecessors include the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who served in Munich from 1977 to 1982 before becoming the head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and later being elected pope. Benedict gave extensive written testimony for the report.

"In a total of four cases, we came to the conclusion that the then-archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger, can be accused of misconduct," said one of the reports' authors, Martin Pusch.

Two of those cases, he said, involved perpetrators who offended while he was in office and were punished by the judicial system but were kept in pastoral work without express limits on what they were allowed to do. No action was ordered under canon law.

In a third case, a cleric who had been convicted by a court outside Germany was put into service in the Munich archdiocese and the circumstances speak for Ratzinger having known of the priest's previous history, Pusch said.

When the church abuse scandal first flared in Germany in 2010, attention swirled around another case: that of a pedophile priest whose transfer to Munich to undergo therapy was approved under Ratzinger in 1980.

The priest was allowed to resume pastoral work, a decision that the church has said was made by a lower-ranking official without consulting the archbishop. In 1986, the priest received a suspended sentence for molesting a boy.

Another of the report's authors, Ulrich Wastl, said Benedict's claim not to have attended a meeting in 1980 in which the priest's transfer to Munich was discussed lacks credibility.

[...the story continues, as does the child rape and pedophile protection, to this day...]

Not the point of the story at all. Read before commenting.

Sure, anyone and everyone can apply, to basically anything. Sometimes you can even get into stuff they didn't think they accepted applicants to. Most of the times you get ignored though.