Frankly speaking, I might be not as old as you nor as knowledgeable and then I didn't see this before he got elected Pope. I just considered him as the Pope and found that after John-Paul 2 and the deeds he did, he was like a breeze of fresh air putting back the Tridentine Mass (I didn't care about extraordinary or ordinary) though it was never forbidden, defrocking the pedophiles, condemning islam and so on. You can look
here for instance where it's recalled : « The Arab and Muslim worlds erupted in protest after Benedict delivered a speech in Germany on September 12 in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor who characterised some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as 'evil and inhuman,' particularly, his command to 'spread by the sword the faith.' » And these peoples have stolen a whole country... a whole country ! We're not opposed to small players...
In my opinion, but I may be wrong, it's John-Paul II who is responsible for the loss of Faith of BILLIONS through his subversion and his fake ecumenism when he blasphemed Jesus Christ putting Him on an equal foot with evil and fake religions like at Assisi... But you may be right and I may be wrong about Benedict XVI. Just for me personally, I felt it very differently than you seeing him like playing a comedy as a Pope, because anyone could oblige someone else to go to a mosque or a synagogue like some bank directors that have their family hostage at home and go to plunder their own bank agency...I'm not justifying it at all but Saint Peter denied Jesus Christ 3 times and we all know that he was sincere. Benedict XVI has been frank about islam, masonry and some bad turns Catholicism was taking. He didn't try to hide like his predecessors who even didn't try to fight. It's said in the Bible that God doesn't allow anyone to sin. So, even though some examples are bad, each one of us are also responsible about what we do and if we abandon the faith. The way that peoples chose to follow cannot exonerate themselves of their own responsibility. The Pope is not good ? But is it not the true religion that gave such huge freedom to the Western world compared to the 3rd one, brought the hospital, the free healthcare, the social housing, free instruction, education for girls and so on ? Peoples are also free to ask themselves some questions and not to believe that others owe them something ! Or if anyone else owe them something about the faith, don't they also owe something to God too ? The main problem of our societies is that peoples stopped to preach the Gospel and that many prefer to debate about whose the Pope is or is not instead of evangelizing their country. Without the Gospel, all human beings fall. And to paraphrase something someone said once « a dumb person that preach goes always farer than two intellectuals that debate »
I think you cannot understand what Pope Benedict XVI did so if you didn't read the soviet techniques of infiltration explained in the books of
Suzanne Labin for instance (I know in French, maybe you can try this one that I found in English :
Technique of Soviet Propaganda par Committee on the Judiciary: Good Paperback (1960) First Edition | Oddball Books). Most peoples don't understand the war going on which she summarized clearly in her book « le Tiers-Monde entre l'Est et l'Ouest : payer en dollars, voter en roubles » which means « the 3rd world between East and West : to pay in dollars, vote in rubles ». I don't know if you studied this important field about the war going on, but it's clearly here that one has to look for in order to understand what happened in the last 60 years in the Catholic church.
And so for me even without having read this then and not knowing him before he got Pope, Benedict XVI acted like the prodigal son in the parables who found out the faith and had then to be very, very careful knowing by whom he's surrounded.
Most Cardinals would not shake hands with him as we can see from a footage which mean that he would not have had the support for consecrating Russia validly. It's different than John-Paul 2 that did have and didn't make it validly likewise Pius XII whereas Blessed Virgin Mary asked that it's been done before 1960 or the death of Sister Lucy if this latter happened first. It's a chastisement because peoples didn't want to correct themselves and got the 2nd WW, and then still didn't want to change and are abandoned by God almost totally. It's Pius XII that didn't do it first according to the asking of Blessed Virgin Mary which was for before 1960 but you still seem considering him as a Pope. And it's said in the Bible that God detests the double standard...
He's still the Pope and if you read the prophecies of Fatima or the one of Saint Pius X, it's said that there will be a Pope that will regret bitterly what he did, will have to flee Rome which will be half in ruins, be executed by sort of muslim mercenaries but will be sincere. Pius X said he saw the Russian at Genova in Italy... It's for very soon. Elena Aïello said she saw the red flag waving on the dome of the Vatican... All this is quite certain to happen and explained how by the book of the author I spoke of... I encourage you to read her if you find some of her translated books. The war is so big that I don't see how it would have been otherwise.
If the children of Fatima that are Saints and were promised to go to Heaven prayed for him, then anyother Catholic peoples have to also. There is something huge behind all these events that peoples don't get because they don't know about one author such as Suzanne Labin explained. Maybe you know though.
P.s. : I add here one of her book if it inrests you on GTV « Embassies of subversion » that you can find here too :
archive.org/9/items/EmbassiesOfSubversion/EoS2.pdfThe Anti-Benedict Conspiracy - The American Conservative