Pope Benedict XVI said Monday he lacks the strength
to fulfill his duties and on Feb. 28 will become the first pontiff in 600 years
to resign. The announcement sets the stage for a conclave in March to elect a
new leader for world’s 1 billion Catholics. The announcement took the Vatican —
and the rest of the world — by surprise.
Benedict
emphasized that carrying out the duties of being pope — the leader of more than
a billion Roman Catholics worldwide — requires “both strength of mind and
body.”
“After
having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the
certainty that my strengths due to an advanced age are no longer suited to an
adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,” he told the cardinals.
The
move allows the Vatican to hold a conclave before Easter to elect a new pope.
The
last pope to resign was Pope Gregory XII, who stepped down in 1415 in a deal to
end the Great Western Schism among competing papal claimants. The most famous
resignation was Pope Celestine V in 1294; Dante placed him in hell for it.
When
Benedict was elected at age 78, he was the oldest pope chosen in nearly 300
years. At the time, he has already been planning to retire as the Vatican’s
chief orthodoxy watchdog to spend his final years writing in the “peace and
quiet” of his native Bavaria.
