It's the first time a pope has resigned in nearly 600 years.
"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, according to the Vatican.
After Benedict's resignation becomes effective on February
28, cardinals will meet to choose a new leader for the church.
"Before Easter, we will have the new
pope," the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said at a news
conference.
The decision was not impulsive, he said.
"It's not a decision he has just improvised,"
Lombardi said. "It's a decision he has pondered over."
After his resignation, Benedict, 85, will probably retire to
a monastery and devote himself to a life of reflection and prayer, he said.
Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the president of the Catholic
Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said the decision "shocked and
surprised everyone."
"Yet, on reflection, I am sure that many will recognise
it to be a decision of great courage and characteristic clarity of mind and
action," he said.
Benedict -- born Joseph Ratzinger -- will not be involved in
choosing a new pope or in guiding the church after his resignation, Lombardi
said.
Benedict was elected pope in 2005 after the death of Pope
John Paul II, the third-longest-serving leader of the Catholic Church.
He has served during a time in which the church is declining
in his native Europe but expanding in Africa and Latin America.
His papacy also has been marked with a series of scandals
and controversies, including hundreds of new allegations of sexual abuse by
priests.
Ratzinger was born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl Am Inn,
Bavaria, a heavily Catholic region of Germany.
He spent his adolescent years in Traunstein, near the
Austrian border, during the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler.
Ratzinger wrote in his memoirs that school officials
enrolled him in the Hitler Youth movement against his will when in 1941, when
he was 14.
He said he was allowed to leave the organization because he
was studying for the priesthood, but was drafted into the army in 1943. He
served with an anti-aircraft unit until he deserted in the waning days of WW
II.
After the war, he resumed his theological studies and was
ordained in 1951. He received his doctorate in theology two years later and
taught dogma and theology at German universities for several years.
In 1962, he served as a consultant during the pivotal
Vatican II council to Cardinal Frings, a reformer who was the archbishop of
Cologne, Germany.
As a young priest, Ratzinger was on the progressive side of
theological debates, but began to shift right after the student revolutions of
1968, CNN Vatican analyst John Allen Jr. said.
In his book "Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican's Enforcer
of the Faith," Allen says Ratzinger is a shy and gentle person whose
former students spoke of him as a well-prepared and caring professor.
Pope Paul VI named him archbishop of Munich in 1977 and
promoted him to cardinal the next month. Ratzinger served as archbishop of
Munich until 1981, when he was nominated by John Paul II to be the head of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position he held until his
election as pope.
He became dean of the College of Cardinals in November 2002
and in that role called the cardinals to Rome for the conclave that elected him
the 265th pope.
In his initial appearance as pope, he told the crowd in St.
Peter's Square that he would serve as "a simple and humble worker in the
vineyards of the Lord."
He is the sixth German to serve as pope and the first since
the 11th century.
The last pope to resign was Gregory XII in 1415. He did so to
end a civil war within the church in which more than one man claimed to be
pope.
What do you think about the pope’s decision, please leave
your comments down below..
Source: CNN.
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