Samantha Zucchi Insidefoto/European Pressphoto Agency
Pope Benedict XVI blessing members of the Order of the Knights of Malta at the Vatican on Saturday.
ROME — Citing advanced years and infirmity, Pope Benedict XVI, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, stunned the Roman Catholic world on Monday by saying that he would resign on Feb. 28, less than eight years after he took office, the first pope to do so in six centuries.
A profoundly conservative figure whose papacy was overshadowed by clerical abuse scandals, the pope, 85, was elected by fellow cardinals in 2005 after the death of his predecessor, John Paul II.
After examining his conscience “before God,” he said on Monday, “I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise” of his position as head of the world’s Roman Catholics.
Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said Benedict would continue to carry out his papal duties until Feb. 28 and that a successor could probably be elected by Easter which falls this year on March 31. But, he added, that date was “not an announcement, it’s a hypothesis.”
While there had been questions about Benedict’s health and infirmity, the timing of his announcement — even by the Vatican’s official account — sent shock waves across the globe, even though Benedict had in the past endorsed the notion that an incapacitated pope could resign.
“The pope took us by surprise,” said Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, who explained that many cardinals were in Rome on Monday for a ceremony at the Vatican and heard the pope’s address. Italy’s outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti said he was “very shaken by the unexpected news.”
The announcement plunged the Roman Catholic world into frenzied speculation about his likely successor and seemed likely to inspire many contrasting evaluations of a papacy that was seen as both conservative and contentious.
The pope made his initial announcement in Latin but his statement was translated into seven languages — Italian, French, English, German, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish.
“In today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of St. Peter and proclaim the gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me,” the pope said.
“For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom, I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of St. Peter.”
Elected on April 19, 2005, Pope Benedict said his papacy would end on Feb. 28. At a news conference, the Vatican spokesman said the pope did not express strong emotion as he made his announcement but spoke with “great dignity, great concentration and great understanding of the significance of the moment.”
At the time of his election, Benedict was a popular choice within the college of 115 cardinals who chose him as a man who shared — and at times went beyond — the conservative theology of his predecessor and mentor, John Paul II, and seemed ready to take over the job after serving beside him for more than two decades.
In the final years of John Paul II’s papacy, which were dogged by illness, Benedict, then Cardinal Ratzinger has said if the pope “sees that he absolutely cannot do it anymore, then certainly he will resign.”
When he took office, Pope Benedict’s well-known stands included the assertion that Catholicism is “true” and other religions are “deficient;” that the modern, secular world, especially in Europe, is spiritually weak; and that Catholicism is in competition with Islam. He had also strongly opposed homosexuality, the ordination of women priests and stem cell research.
Born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, in Bavaria, he was the son of a police officer. He was ordained in 1951, at age 24, and began his career as a liberal academic and theological adviser at the Second Vatican Council, supporting many efforts to make the church more open.
But he moved theologically and politically to the right. Pope Paul VI named him bishop of Munich in 1977 and appointed him a cardinal within three months. Taking the chief doctrinal job at the Vatican in 1981, he moved with vigor to quash liberation theology in Latin America, cracked down on liberal theologians and in 2000 wrote the contentious Vatican document “’Dominus Jesus,” asserting the truth of Catholic belief over others.
The last pope to resign was Gregory XII, who left the papacy in 1415 to end what was known as the Western Schism among several competitors for the papacy.
Benedict’s tenure was caught up in growing sexual abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church that crept ever closer to the Vatican itself.
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Pope Benedict XVI Says He Will Resign
