CathInfo.com

Some notes:

1) He does call him Pope Benedict XVI (disappointing)

2) He praises the good he did with the Motu.  (Did he intend good, or, as per Ganswein, was it meant to draw Trads back into the Conciliar Church?)  Of course, the motives are speculative and the good done by this may redound to reducing his punishment for other things.

3) Some have read the last paragraph as assuming Ratzinger was saved, but it's more of a Latin-esque type of construct, where he says that, if Ratzinger made it, he can pray for us.  I do find this a bit weak, but in the spirit of kindness toward the departed, he's not going to go the Dimond route of "Ratzinger enters hell" (I think their headline when he first was announced as gravely ill was, "Ratzinger about to enter hell." -- so the opposite extreme).  IMO, in between these two extremes where on says that we hoped that he repented of his heresies and saved his soul would have been more appropriate.  To say othewise is to minimize the gravity of the heresies taught by Ratzinger as "Pope" Benedict XVI.

4) Suggests that the heresies of Ratzinger were "sins of [his] youth" but admits that they have never been retracted.  He probably minimizes here a bit the gravity of Ratzinger's "heresies of [his] youth".

5) Clearly indicates that Ratzinger was a Hegelian, trying to create a synthesis between Tradition and the NOM, but stops short of saying that this was part of his deliberate plan to destroy (which of course would be speculative).

So he tries to find a balance between kindness and not giving him a complete pass or whitewash of his errors.

Overall, I feel that he's too "soft" regarding Ratzinger's errors, which were in fact grave heresies, and too hopefull that Ratzinger is in Heaven or Purgatory ... which one cannot do if one continues to cling to pertinacious heresy.  I would have reworded this as holding out HOPE that in his last decade of solitude he may have had a chance to repent of his heresies.  Perhaps he takes more of a light hand because he says that the horrors of the past 10 years (Bergoglio) make Ratzinger's papacy pale in comparison.  To me that's a rather superficial view of the situation, as they both taught the same errors, just that Bergoglio has been more brazen about it.  But the biggest fault I find with this that he suggests that Ratzinger's heresies were only in his youth.  If one studies the actual "teaching" of Ratzinger while claiming to be pope, he continued to teach heresy thoroughout his putative papacy.  By implying that these were in the rear view mirror of his youth, he's implicitly saying that Ratzinger was mostly orthodox when he was "Pope" when nothing could be farther from the truth.

So I am disappointed with this statement, although I understand that he's trying to be gentle or kind in the wake of Ratzinger's demise, but could the same types of things have been said of Martin Luther after he died?  I think that +Vigano missed the mark.  His attempt at "balance" errs way too much toward softness.

BXVI and Francis had the same goal: Eliminate any contradiction to V2.

BXVI’s method was to negotiate (give and receive concessions from the SSPX) and thereby bring them into the conciliar church where, as Fr. Cottier said after his conquest of Campos -for which he was made a Cardinal- “Reconciliation carries within itself its own dynamic (ie., self-censorship)…what is important is that there no longer be rejection in their heart…we must be patient…gradually there must be additional steps, like concelebration.” 

You can see plenty of this in the SSPX today, which contrary to the conservative narrative, shows just how effective Ratzinger’s war against tradition has been.

Francis sees no need for such games: Pound them out of existence, and move along.

Of the two methods, it is actually Ratzinger’s which is the more brutal, because despite the brazen anti -traditionalist measures of Francis, the effect is to ensure an independent traditional movement survives outside the conciliar apparatus, in wait for more propitious times, whereas Ratzinger would welcome all the flies into the web, and assimilate all the trads into conciliar Borg (thereby destroying traditionalism in toto).

Francis’s impatience BXVI’s long game is a tactical error.