Outspoken African Cardinal Robert Sarah has reacted fiercely to detractors of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, accusing them of “vulgarity and baseness” in their criticisms of the former pope’s afterword to the cardinal’s latest book.

“The arrogance, the violence of language, the disrespect and the inhuman contempt for Benedict XVI are diabolical and cover the Church with a mantle of sadness and shame,” Cardinal Sarah said.

“These people demolish the Church and its profound nature,” he added.

Critics of Benedict XVI have complained that the former Pontiff meddled in Church affairs by contributing the afterword to the German edition of the book, in which Benedict praises Cardinal Sarah and thanks Pope Francis for appointing the African prelate to his current post as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship.

In his afterword to Cardinal Sarah’s book, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, Benedict XVI wrote that the liturgy is in “good hands” with the Guinean cardinal, while also praising Sarah for his prayer life.

Sarah, Benedict writes, speaks “out of the depths of silence with the Lord, out of his interior union with him, and thus really has something to say to each one of us.”

“We should be grateful to Pope Francis for appointing such a spiritual teacher as head of the congregation that is responsible for the celebration of the liturgy in the Church,” Benedict writes.

The last line of the afterword reads, “With Cardinal Sarah, a master of silence and of interior prayer, the liturgy is in good hands.”

Critics were quick to accuse the former pope of interfering in Church politics and trying to undermine Pope Francis.

One, the Italian liturgist Andrea Grillo, a longtime detractor of Pope Benedict, claims that the former pope has behaved in a “scandalous way” by writing the afterword in praise of Cardinal Sarah and his book, accusing him of “clericalism” and “hypocrisy.”

“It’s as if Ratzinger suddenly renounced his renunciation and wishes to influence the decisions of his successor,” Grillo declared.

Throughout his diatribe, Grillo refuses to call Benedict by his correct title, but insists on referring to him simply as “Ratzinger” or “emeritus bishop.”

Cardinal Sarah’s sharp reaction to Benedict’s critics echoes prior statements from the prelate, who never minces words.

At a Washington prayer breakfast in May, 2016, the Vatican cardinal denounced same-sex marriage, transgender bathroom laws, and attacks on the family as “demonic.”

In his powerful address, Sarah said that these are “portentous times” for the Church and for the world, while slamming gender theory as “ideological colonization” and decrying the “insidious” dismantling of religious freedom in the United States.

Regarding same-sex marriage, Sarah said that what is at stake is not an ideological war about “abstract ideas” but rather the protection of “ourselves, children, and future generations from a demonic ideology that says children do not need mothers and fathers.”

This earned the Guinean cardinal the enduring hostility of gay activists, one of whom has referred to him as “one of the shrillest voices against ‘gender ideology,’ same-sex marriage, abortion, contraception and other so-called attacks on the family.”

The African prelate, who has been dubbed “a standard bearer for Catholic orthodoxy,” was the world’s youngest bishop in 1979, when Pope John Paul II summoned him to don the miter at only 34 years of age.

He is now one of the most important cardinals in the Church, as the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship, and his name often comes up on the short list of “papabili”—or papal candidates to eventually succeed Pope Francis.

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