Why? Pope Benedict XVI’s Body Not Wearing Signature Papal Red Shoes

Pope Benedict XVI made mistakes during his pontificate, but he was a good pope overall and a genuinely holy man. One traditional mark of the papal status was particularly beloved by the usually unpretentious pope—his red shoes. While red shoes were traditionally worn by popes, both John Paul II and Pope Francis don’t (or didn’t) usually wear them. Benedict did—which makes it particularly puzzling why his body was NOT wearing red shoes when it lay in state in St. Peter’s Basilica this week.

Red symbolizes blood and thus the Passion of Christ, so popes traditionally wore red shoes to signify that they were following in the footsteps of Christ. While Catholic News Agency (CNA) said that JPII did not usually wear the red shoes, images of JPII’s body lying in state show that the papal red shoes were placed on the dead pope’s feet, because of the tradition and symbolism behind them. Not so for Benedict XVI. Why? There are few times when symbols of papal office matter more than in such a situation as the last viewing of a pope’s body.

Since Benedict specifically resurrected the practice of normally wearing the red shoes, why wasn’t his body wearing them? It might seem a very small matter to some, but considering how Pope Francis has specifically undermined his retired predecessor before (for instance by explicitly attacking Pope Benedict’s motu proprio allowing the Latin Mass with his own motu proprio). And considering also how beloved the papal red leather shoes were to Benedict, it wouldn’t be surprising if Pope Francis’s Vatican, as anti-tradition and modernist as it has been, deliberately left off the red shoes as a sort of post-mortem dig at traditional Benedict. It seems to implicate a disrespect for Benedict’s former papal office or a desire to indicate he was just a cardinal again as many people call Benedict the true pope and Francis a fraud.

CNA said that Benedict XVI left off the red shoes when he retired from being pope, but the only proof CNA seemed to have was that Benedict’s body was not wearing the red shoes during the viewing, but rather “ordinary black clerical shoes.” Even if Benedict had stopped wearing the shoes, like John Paul II, his body lying in state as a pope should have had the red leather shoes again (just like JPII). Symbols matter. Pope Francis knows that, which is why he put up a statue of Martin Luther at the Vatican and displayed a pagan idol before the altar of St. Peter’s, unmistakable messages that he was trying to reverse two thousand years of Catholic teaching on heresy and idolatry.

And the fact that Pope Benedict XVI’s body was not wearing the red shoes he prized so much as symbolizing his following Christ is wrong. Between Pope Francis and Pope Benedict, there’s only one man whose legitimacy as pontiff is questionable—and it’s certainly not Benedict XVI.