VATICAN CITY
Press TV (Iran)
Pope Benedict XVI has given his final papal address amid the Vatican’s decades-long scandalous record of pedophilia, sexual abuse, theft and bribery.
Outgoing Pope Benedict XVI held his final all-purpose speech in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City on Wednesday, reminding the 1.5 billion Roman Catholic followers that he will pray for and try to look past the Vatican’s history of transgression.
“Then there have been times when the seas were rough and the wind against us, as in the whole history of the Church it has ever been – and the Lord seemed to sleep,” said the 85-year-old high priest, while describing the tumultuous role of the papacy.
Pope Benedict confessed that “in recent months, I felt that my strength had decreased”, that I was too weak to carry out the duties of the Church along with the vices “that seems to push faith more and more toward the margins of life… in a time in which many speak of its decline.”
Opponents criticized Benedict for failing to mend the Church’s decades-long history of worldwide scandalous wrongdoing including theft, bribery, rampant pedophilia and allegations of covering up sexual abuse by priests in order to protect its own reputation.
A report published last week by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica said that the real reason the pontiff decided to resign was in light of an internal church probe that informed him about a series of blackmails, grafts and underground gay sex in the Vatican.
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