Reacting to the need around him, in 1987 he established a shelter for women and children, the Project of the Blessed Santa Margherita de Cortona, remaining with it (and his parish, Our Lady of the Abandoned Parish) for nearly ten years.
After the assassination of the bishop of Bukavu, Father Benítez volunteered to meet the need, and was sent to, at the time, Zaire. He was made bishop, and established the Marie-Clémentine Anuarite Nengapeta Hospital for the victim-survivors of genocidal sexual violence.
In 2007 he was moved again, becoming the Bishop of Baghdad. His ministry was interrupted in 2015 when, at the age of 57, he was caught in a car bomb explosion and his appendix was ruptured; the surgeon who saved his life discovered that he had an internal uterus and ovaries. This discovery devastated Vincent, who was thrown into gender crisis that led to questioning if his ordination was valid, and, accordingly, if the last rites he had administered to people had been legitimate. While physical recovery didn't take him very long, mentally he was in a very dark place for some time. Nevertheless, two years later he was created Monsignor and transferred yet again - but, rather than anywhere safer, it was to Kabul. In late 2017, he flew to the Vatican to talk to the Pope and offer his resignation from the priesthood and his offices; instead, he found counsel and comfort, and came to terms fully with his identity as an intersex man. He returned to his ministry, and was created Cardinal Archbishop in pectore.
Upon the death of the Pope, he flew to the Vatican to participate in the Conclave; he never returned to Kabul. Instead, Pope Innocent XIV stepped onto a balcony to face a newly bomb-damaged Rome and frightened and angry Catholics around the world.
Having declared privately that he would follow his conscience with no consideration to preventing a schism, he was a man of his word; soft-spoken but principled and decisive, he immediately made waves well beyond those of his shock election.
One of his projects as pope is a redefinition of marriage that places love over procreation, paving the groundwork for divorce, birth control, and marriage regardless of the genders of those being married.
He is active in interfaith dialogue and community, and the greatest threats to his papacy come from within the Catholic Church. Only one year after his election, he is shot by an American extremist linked to the CIA. Fortunately, the wound is mild (as far as GSW go), and the only other people injured are the assailant (who is bitten by a nun) and an officer of the Swiss Guard (who is grazed in the arm by a bullet). The group behind the attack continue to be a threat not just to Innocent's life but to the lives of the Swiss Guards...
