Pope Benedict XVI Resigns: Softly Spoken in Latin, the Resignation That Shocked the World

The Telegraph
February 11, 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/9863677/Pope-Benedict-XVI-resigns-Softly-spoken-in-Latin-the-resignation-that-shocked-the-world.html

From his throne-like chair on a purple dais in the Sala del Concistoro, part of the Apostolic Palace, he quietly told his “fratres carissimi”, or “dear brothers”, that he needed to “communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church”.

Having examined his conscience, he said, he had “come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry”.

His “mind and body” were failing him, and in consequence he had decided to “renounce the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter”.

Due to his choice of Latin, and because of the enormity of what he was saying, several of the 50 cardinals arranged around him on the marble floor did not understand what he was telling them.

Their neighbours explained that the 265th Pope had just become the first in 598 years to resign.

“All the cardinals remained shocked and were looking at each other,” said Monsignor Oscar Sanchez of Mexico, who was in the room at the time.

Only a handful of the Pope’s most senior aides had been given any warning of what was to come. Among them was Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, who said it had come as a “bolt from the blue” when he was told.

The Pope’s announcement came shortly after 10.30am GMT, and at 10.46 the outside world learnt the news via the Italian news agency ANSA, whose Vatican reporter, Giovanna Chirri, got the scoop of her life because she understands Latin.

Given the suddenness of the announcement, and the enduring controversies of the Pope’s eight years in office, suspicions were immediately raised that there was something we were not being told.

Popes, after all, do not resign, they carry on stoically, no matter how frail, until death. Italians are among the world’s great conspiracy theorists, and there were hypotheses aplenty among the crowds gathering in St Peter’s Square.

Was there a scandal about to break in the Vatican which had forced the move? Had one of the child abuse cases the Pope had dealt with during his time as a cardinal come back to haunt him? Was he nursing a secret terminal illness?

Nicola Signorile, a 53-year-old businessman on holiday from Bari in southern Italy, said: “I think it must mean that he is much more ill than we have been led to believe — perhaps even getting towards the end of his life.”

On Twitter, whose users include the Pope himself under the name @Pontifex, Louise Mensch, the former MP and Catholic, said: “Papacy not a job. Cannot believe it?…?hope more to this than we yet know.” The Vatican, alert to the speculation sweeping the internet, moved swiftly to kill off the rumours, saying that the Pope had not quit because of any “difficulties” in the papacy or because of any “outside pressure”.

The Pope’s spokesman pointed to a phrase in Benedict XVI’s pronouncement in which he said he had made the decision “with full freedom”. Tellingly the Pope’s brother, Georg Ratzinger, also a priest, said he had known for “months” that the announcement was coming, ruling out any suspicion that the resignation had been prompted by events. “His age is weighing on him,” he said.