Benedict – an intellectual and undiplomatic pope – died 31 December

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 95 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 towards Muslims.

  Born 16 April 1927 4.15 am Marktl, Germany, he is a Sun Aries with an intemperate, argumentative Mars in Gemini square a 1^st house Uranus Mercury which would give him an impulsive tendency to speak in haste and then have to rethink. His verbally combative Mars in Gemini is sextile both his Sun and Neptune as well as being in an overly confident square to Jupiter. His  4^th house Mars, ruler of his Sun, is his driving force. This is a chart that sits on a small volcano. He also has what I always thought was his trademark – an intellectually rigid, self-righteous Saturn in Sagittarius in the 9^th.

  His composite/relationship chart with the Vatican was aggravated with a power-struggling Mars Pluto conjunction and a Yod of Sun sextile inconjunct Saturn which would make his term of office hard going.

  He was an unsettling ever-present companion in the background for Pope Francis, with their relationship chart hinting at a chained-together by circumstance and resenting it Saturn Pluto and a competitive/argumentative Sun opposition Mars.

 Add On: Pope Benedict died at 9.34am 31 December 2022 in Rome with the Aries Moon exactly conjunct his Sun and tr Saturn moving to oppose his 6^th house Neptune within days.