Pope Benedict XVI Says He Will Resign
ROME — Citing advanced years and infirmity, Pope Benedict XVI
stunned the Roman Catholic world on Monday by saying that he would
resign on Feb. 28 after less than eight years in office, the first pope
to do so in six centuries.
After examining his conscience “before God,” he said in a statement that
reverberated around the world on the Internet and social media sites,
“I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age,
are no longer suited to an adequate exercise” of his position as head
of the world’s one billion Roman Catholics.
A profoundly conservative figure whose papacy was overshadowed by
clerical abuse scandals, Benedict, 85, was elected by fellow cardinals
in 2005 after the death of John Paul II.
Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican
spokesman, said the pope would continue to carry out his duties until
Feb. 28 and a successor could be elected by Easter, which falls on March
31. But, he added, the timing for an election of a new pope is “not an
announcement, it’s a hypothesis.”
While there had been questions about Benedict’s health, the timing of
his announcement sent shock waves around the world, even though he had
in the past endorsed the notion that an incapacitated pope could resign.
“The pope took us by surprise,” said Father Lombardi, who explained that
many cardinals were in Rome on Monday for a ceremony at the Vatican and
heard the pope’s address. Italy’s prime minister, Mario Monti, said he
was “very shaken by the unexpected news.”
The announcement plunged the Roman Catholic world into intense
speculation about his likely successor and seemed likely to inspire many
contrasting evaluations of a papacy that was seen as both conservative
and contentious.
The pope made his announcement in Latin but his statement was translated
into seven languages — Italian, French, English, German, Polish,
Portuguese and Spanish.
“In today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by
questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern
the bark of St. Peter and proclaim the gospel, both strength of mind and
body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has
deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my
incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me,” the pope
said.
“For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with
full freedom, I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome,
Successor of St. Peter.”
Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was elected on April 19, 2005.
At a news conference, the Vatican spokesman said the pope did not
express strong emotion as he made his announcement but spoke with “great
dignity, great concentration and great understanding of the
significance of the moment.”
Father Lombardi said that the pope would retire first to his summer
residence in Castelgandolfo, in thehills outside Rome and later at a
monastery in Vatican City.
At the time of his election, Benedict was a popular choice within the
college of 115 cardinals who chose him as a man who shared — and at
times went beyond — the conservative theology of his predecessor and
mentor, John Paul II, and seemed ready to take over the job after
serving beside him for more than two decades.
In the final years of John Paul II’s papacy, which were dogged by
illness, Benedict, then Cardinal Ratzinger has said if the pope “sees
that he absolutely cannot do it anymore, then certainly he will resign.”
When he took office, Pope Benedict’s well-known stands included the
assertion that Catholicism is “true” and other religions are
“deficient;” that the modern, secular world, especially in Europe, is
spiritually weak; and that Catholicism is in competition with Islam. He
had also strongly opposed homosexuality, the ordination of women priests
and stem cell research.
Born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, in Bavaria, he was the son of a
police officer. He was ordained in 1951, at age 24, and began his
career as a liberal academic and theological adviser at the Second
Vatican Council, supporting many efforts to make the church more open.
But he moved theologically and politically to the right. Pope Paul VI
named him bishop of Munich in 1977 and appointed him a cardinal within
three months. Taking the chief doctrinal job at the Vatican in 1981, he
moved with vigor to quash liberation theology in Latin America, cracked
down on liberal theologians and in 2000 wrote the contentious Vatican
document “’Dominus Jesus,” asserting the truth of Catholic belief over
others.
The last pope to resign was Gregory XII, who left the papacy in 1415 to
end what was known as the Western Schism among several competitors for
the papacy.
Benedict’s tenure was caught up in growing sexual abuse scandals in the
Roman Catholic Church that crept ever closer to the Vatican itself.
In 2010, as outrage built over clerical abuses, some secular and liberal
Catholic voices called for his resignation, their demands fueled by
reports that laid part of blame at his doorstep, citing his response
both as a bishop long ago in Germany and as a cardinal heading the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles such cases.
In one disclosure, news emerged that in 1985, when Benedict was Cardinal
Ratzinger, he signed a letter putting off efforts to defrock a
convicted child-molesting priest. He cited the priest’s relative youth
but also the good of the church.
Vatican
officials and experts who follow the papacy closely dismissed the idea
of stepping down at the time. “There is no objective motive to think in
terms of resignation, absolutely no motive,” said the Rev. Lombardi, the
Vatican spokesman. “It’s a completely unfounded idea.”
For his supporters, it was a painful paradox that the long-gathering
abuse scandal finally hit the Vatican with a vengeance under Benedict.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, charged with leading the powerful
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he had been ahead of many of
his peers in recognizing how deeply the church had been damaged by
revelations that priests around the world had sexually abused youths for
decades, even longer. As early as 2005, he obliquely referred to
priestly abuse as a “filth in the church.”
He went on to apologize for the abuse and met with victims, a first for
the papacy. But he could not escape the reality that the church had
shielded priests accused of molestation, minimized behavior it would
have otherwise deemed immoral and kept it secret from the civil
authorities, forestalling criminal prosecution.
The church’s 265th pope, Benedict was the first German to hold the
title in half a millennium, and his election was a milestone toward
Germany’s spiritual renewal 60 years after World War II and the Holocaust. At 78 he was also the oldest new pope since 1730.
The church he inherited was in crisis, the sexual-abuse scandal being
its most vivid manifestation. It was an institution run by a largely
European hierarchy overseeing a faithful — one billion strong — largely
residing in the developing world. And it was increasingly being torn
between its ancient, insular ways and the modern world.
For the church’s liberal elements, rather than being the answer to that
crisis, Benedict’s election represented the problem: an out-of-step
conservative European academic. Many wondered if he would be a mere
caretaker, filling the post after the long papacy of the beloved John
Paul until a younger, more dynamic heir could be elevated.
In 2006, less than two years into his papacy, Benedict stirred ire
across the Muslim world, referring in a long, scholarly address to a
conversation on the truths of Christianity and Islam that took place
between a 14th-century Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II
Paleologus, and a Persian scholar.
“The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war,” the
pope said. “He said, I quote, ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that
was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as
his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’”
While making clear that he was quoting someone else, Benedict did not
say whether he agreed or not. He also briefly discussed the Islamic
concept of jihad, which he defined as “holy war,” and said that violence
in the name of religion is contrary to God’s nature and to reason.
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