In an unexpected move, Pope Benedict XVI became the first pope to resign in almost 600 years when he announced Monday he would step down from his position, citing deteriorating “strength of mind and body.”
“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,” Benedict said in his speech Monday, delivered to a private church body in Vatican City.
“In today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith…both strength of mind and body are necessary… which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me…Well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome,” he said.
Spiritual leader to the world’s population of over 1 billion Catholics, his quiet announcement Monday prompted immediate and widespread response across the globe. Monday morning saw news agencies as diverse as Aljazeera English to the Washington Post being quickly swamped with coverage of the unexpected announcement. Social media played its part as well, as The New York Times reported, with #pontifexit quickly trending on Twitter only minutes after the statement from the Vatican.
Yet the 85-year old pontiff, unlike the last of his predecessors to step down from the position, resigned in ‘plena libertate,’ translated from the Latin, in which he made his announcement, as being in “full freedom.” The health decline he had experienced in the last months had seen him taken to the altar of Saint Peter’s during Christmas Eve Midnight Mass on a wheeled platform, and his advancing years seem to have taken their toll. During the same mass, the tiredness that appeared to have crept in during the last months also manifested itself as he appeared to doze off during the proceedings; he appears to have done so at points throughout other masses as well.
Shocked though the rest of the world was at the news of the resignation, the pope’s brother, Georg Ratzinger, told German news organization DPA that he had known of the pope’s plan to resign for many months preceding, and that “age was taking its toll” on the pope.
According to the Washington Post, Ratzinger also noted his brother’s gradual decline: “He has gotten tired faster and faster, and walking has become hard for him” but still, Ratzinger also said his brother had done “the best he possibly could have done” in the position. The final decision had been made by Benedict XVI soon after a taxing trip to Mexico and Cuba in early 2012, according to the editor of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, Giovanni Maria Vian.
Born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger in 1927, in Marktl, Bavaria, Germany, the pope led a varied early life, growing up in a tumultuous Germany and at the age of 14 was reluctantly conscripted into Hitler’s Youth. He saw the tragic circumstances of WWII played out, and entered seminary afterward. In 1951, he was ordained as a Catholic priest, and from there built a formidable reputation as one of the staunchly conservative theologians of the Catholic Church.
He met his friend, the future John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, during the 1978 conclave of cardinals to elect Paul VI’s successor. Nearly thirty years later, on April 19, 2005, Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI by the conclave of cardinals electing the pope following the passing of John Paul II.
As he departs, Pope Benedict XVI leaves a mixed legacy—one that will perhaps be better known for the challenges faced by the conservative pope in a world in which faith has served an increasingly different role than the one it has in the past. During his eight years as pontiff, he has resisted and rejected the issues of ordination of female priests, homosexuality, embryonic stem cell research, and has dealt much with the ongoing problems of rampant child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
The pope will retire after February 28 to “a life dedicated to prayer,” and the next pope may well be in place by Easter, March 31.
