Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI issued shock criticism of his successor Pope Francis, warning the Catholic Church is a boat “on the verge of capsizing.”

According to Lifesite:

Pope Benedict XVI sent a sobering message at the funeral of Cardinal Joachim Meisner today, saying he was moved at the dubia cardinal’s ability to “live out of a deep conviction that the Lord does not abandon His Church, even when the boat has taken on so much water as to be on the verge of capsizing.”

The Church “stands in particularly pressing need of convincing shepherds who can resist the dictatorship of the spirit of the age and who live and think the faith with determination,” Pope Benedict said in a message read by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, his personal secretary and head of the papal household. Because of this “pressing need,” Meisner “found it difficult to leave his post.”

“What moved me all the more was that, in this last period of his life, he learned to let go and to live out of a deep conviction that the Lord does not abandon His Church, even when the boat has taken on so much water as to be on the verge of capsizing,” the pope emeritus concluded.

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Meisner, who was 83, was one of the four cardinals who sent Pope Francis a dubia, consisting of five questions, asking if Amoris Laetitia is aligned with Catholic morality.