Pope Francis gives credit to former Pope Benedict XVI for ensuring smooth transition in leadership through his succession plan. 

The purpose of the plan is to ensure "seamless continuity from one pontificate to the other". So the then Pope Benedict XVI, together with his aids, had taken steps to make that possible prior his resignation which he announced on February 11, 2013.

The preparation took the former pope and his aids several months, from the renovation of the Mater Ecclesia Monastery - a three minute walk convent from the Apostolic Palace where he now lives, to the appointment of Msgr. Georg Ganswein as Benedict's live-in secretary, and shortly after, as an archbishop.

That action was supposedly to make "Ganswein as overseer of the papal palace and live-in secretary to Benedict, as well as the intermediary between old pope and his successor". But that didn't happen, thanks to Pope Francis' unprecedented and shocking move to live at the Domus Sanctae Marthae instead at the Apostolic Palace. 

According to Robert Mickens of National Catholic Reporter, Benedict's succession plan played out well because of Pope Francis's courage to use his own brand of reforms without feeling constrained or showing disrespect to the former pope's contributions. 

If a Ratzinger protégé, as Mickens put it, had been elected as pope, his conceived arrangement might have developed very differently. For one thing, none in Benedict's circle had the audacity to "proffer the fraternal correction that would have most benefited him during difficult moments of his pontificate." Mickens suspects that not any one of them would even have the courage to modify the language that the former pope used or the focus he set during his service. This constraining effect is typical to a successor that comes from the same circle but is less-decisive or self-assured.

Thankfully, Pope Francis is not any of them. By choosing to live in a humbler place, he's able to establish his own style without feeling constrained by the legacy of his predecessors and at the same time dimystify the papacy and "further erase the remants of the old papal court and its mentality".

In the end both deserves credit for each man has given a great gift to the Church and a legacy that helps set the course for a future of truly collegial Church governance.