The first time I watched Netflix’s “The Two Popes,” I hated it. Watching through the eyes of a journalist, I regarded the movie as a total fiction — Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio did not come to Rome to submit his resignation and Pope Benedict XVI did not tell the cardinal he was planning to resign.
I was upset when Benedict was portrayed unfairly as confessing that he did not do anything about the sex abuser and founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Marcial Maciel. In truth, before he became Benedict, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the only one in the Vatican who pressed to investigate Maciel, and when he became pope, Benedict forced Maciel into a retirement of prayer and penance.