Calchas, in the "Iliad", is defined as: μάντι κακῶν, prophet of misfortune. This, simply because he had done his job, prophesying an ominous future: on the other hand, a seer does not decide his own vision, he limits himself to having it, as a gift from God, and to scatter it among the people.
In short, it is not his fault that the future will not be roses and flowers: the prophecy is not made to please, but, if anything, to warn. And, if the times ahead promise to be calamitous, inevitably, the prophet will foresee their calamities.

Innovating is getting solutions right, not railing against the past

From Leopardi to Chesterton the theory of seers passed off as a hoodoo

Likewise, anyone with a realistic view of things will almost always pass for a pessimist. We have countless examples of illustrious thinkers, from Leopardi to Chesterton, who foresaw future ailments or lucidly identified the present ones, passing through menagrams or, worse, chronically depressed.
Instead, alas, it is quite the opposite: the majority of people tend to whitewash their future with a soft rosy color and to imagine a reality that best matches their optimistic expectations.
But reality is reality: dreams may well be desires, but often, when the truth appears, they dissolve like snow in the sun.
It is therefore the primary duty of those who have an understanding of things and the times to carry out a very important task in the society of men: to warn them of imminent dangers and remind them of the path they have taken, show them the route, in short.
And this, more than anyone else, a Pope should do: not indulge the whims of the crowd or adapt his magisterium to the fashions of the moment, but remind the world what the path of Christianity is and indicate the risks of deviations, the dangers of modernity fideist.

"Exchange a look of peace", and the farce becomes tragedy

A just Pontiff guides and does not chase, corrects and does not have to adapt

Put simply, lead and don't chase: correct and don't adapt.
It goes without saying that this kind of Pope, given the times, can pass for misoneist or reactionary: but the Church, for those who believe in it, does not have a chronological dimension. Aim for eternity, so to speak.
And you don't mess with eternity: the divine judgment echoes in it and, sometimes, it rumbles, terrible. Of course, one is perfectly free not to care: not to believe it tout court.
In this case, however, he is equally not authorized to express enthusiastic judgments on those Popes or on those religious who appear to embody a sociological vision of the faith or who seem more like rock stars with a thirst for charity than priests.
They keep quiet, pampering their own secularist or atheist Weltanschauung and don't look into other people's backyards: it's very simple.
Pope Bergoglio, regardless of his real pontifical thickness, is one that atheists like more than believers: with the grotesque aggravating circumstance of atheists who explain to believers that they have not understood a pipe of his greatness.
Pope Ratzinger, vice versa, had in mind what was said before, about the future, reality, eternity: he was a refined theologian, but he was, above all, a believer full of common sense and who did not allow himself to be dazzled by the sirens of modernism.
I mean the term in the sense of blind faith in modernity, naturally, not in Fogazza's sense of the term.

Innovation is not to oppose technical and humanistic culture

The great tragedies of the twentieth century daughters of a blind faith in the modern

The great tragedies of the twentieth century are not the daughters of medieval regurgitation or reactionary visions of society, but precisely of this blind faith in the modern: scientism, hyper-rationalism, the idea of ​​the state-organism and of man-cell.
From the Armenian holocaust to Pol Pot, unspeakable massacres have been justified with this aberrant, inhuman vision: progress without charity brings catastrophes with it.
Other than: "The sleep of reason generates monsters"! The worst monsters were born from a blind faith in reason, without the filter of reasonableness.
Here, I believe that Benedict XVI has kept this simple rule in mind: he has understood, also from his personal vicissitudes, what the metastasis is that threatens mankind.
And that this metastasis reappears every time under different species: with an ever changing face. For this reason, he warned the Church about her, pointing out to her the risks of this clamorous confusion between religion and politics understood religiously, between faith and fanaticism.
But he was alone: ​​dramatically alone, in this titanic undertaking.

The future is already here: always to be understood, never to be wasted…

Fighting the planetary mainstream in solitude with good arguments

Fighting a global mainstream with the sole force of good arguments is a desperate undertaking, even if you are the Pope.
Too many voices are raised to discuss, too many little fingers are raised, too many wands are shaken, when you touch certain themes or address certain knots. Even if you are the pope, I repeat.
The strength of Evil is relative, but that of its subordinates, conscious or unconscious, is terrible: their number is legion.
And, often, it is precisely thanks to stupidity or conformism that Evil asserts itself: it does not need particular strategies or formidable conspiracies. Enough cretins.
Naturally, a Pope cannot say this: however, I like to believe that Ratzinger sometimes thought so. Smiling slyly, like one of his beloved cats.
Sometimes even a cat can inspire a prophet, if the prophetic gift is genuine.
Thus, rather than lack the wise magisterium of Benedict XVI, we will lack the profound sense of reality, when the prophecy will become present and the disaster will seem definitive to us. Other than μάντι κακῶν, then…

"Stopped" from a book on October 15, 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis

“Habemus Papam” on April 19, 2005 and the first speech of Benedict XVI