VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In a letter to an Italian journalist, retired Pope Benedict XVI said questions about the validity of his resignation are “absurd.”
“There is absolutely no doubt regarding the validity of my renunciation of the Petrine ministry,” the retired pope wrote in a letter to Andrea Tornielli, a Vatican correspondent for the newspaper La Stampa and the website Vatican Insider.
Tornielli said he wrote to the retired pope Feb. 14 after reading articles questioning the canonical validity of his announcement Feb. 11, 2013, that he was stepping down.
In the letter, Pope Benedict described as “simply absurd” doubts about how he had formulated his announcement to cardinals gathered for a meeting about canonization causes.
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