re: Pope (emeritus) Benedict has died

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Yeah, and then he moves on. No one questions it and everyone seems to understand that he isn't speaking literal. It's in the Bread of Life discourse in John 6 where he gets a lot of pushback because the people listening to him speak take him literally. Instead of hitting them with an analogy or a parable to make them better understand what he is saying, he doubles down and repeats himself, dwelling on this imagery much more than he does when he calls himself the light of the world or the vine or a door or a shepherd.

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You seem to think my interpretation of John 6 is novel for the reasons you provided. You seem to think that Jesus spoke plainly all the time and then when He was misunderstood, that He was quick to clarify for the sake of the people.

1. It's not unique. The woman at the well is a good example of this. Jesus tells her that He offers water that will provide eternal satisfaction and the woman thinks He's talking about actual water. Instead of clarifying, He tells her about her husbands, to both convict her of her sin as well as to prove His deity. However, He didn't explain what He meant about the water to her.

2. Jesus spoke in parables for the sake of hiding His true meaning. He was even asked about this in Matt. 13: Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. Jesus clarified His meaning most of the time to His intimate disciples so that He could teach them, getting them prepared for when His ministry was over. To the crowds, Jesus spoke in parables to purposefully veil His true meaning, because the things of God are spiritually discerned.

3. Just like the rich young ruler, Jesus was testing the faith of the crowd. He symbolically uses His body as bread (which, again, came shortly after the miracle where He fed the crowds bread) to see whether or not they would be willing to do what was necessary to follow Him. Were they seeking Him, or were they seeking food or something else? They weren't interested in Him, so they left, and He let them go.