He announced it in Latin, which was like him. Because of that choice, and because the event on the morning of Feb. 11, 2013, had been scheduled as a routine piece of Vatican business, several of the Cardinals present didn’t immediately realize what they had just heard. Benedict XVI, the great traditionalist, had announced his intent to do something no pope had in more than 600 years: “I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, successor of Saint Peter.”
A pope does not resign—that had been the modern wisdom. Popes are not like studio heads; there is a supernatural element to their election and, the assumption went, a supernatural element to their departure. They waited until God took them.
Yet Benedict, then nearly 86 old and nearly a decade before his death on Saturday at age 95, knew that, tradition notwithstanding, there is no canon law against resigning. He explained that strength of mind and body are necessary “to govern the barque [ship] of St. Peter,” His own, he said, had deteriorated to the point where “I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.” A few days later he announced that he would spend the rest of his days in a life of prayer, “hidden to the world.”
Under normal circumstances—that is, if the conclave following his resignation had picked a pope who kept the barque pointing the same way Benedict had—his departure’s impact might have taken decades to clarify, and discussions of it would have been a bit theoretical. Years later people would still rehearse it for you. Fr. Thomas Reese, a church liberal whom Benedict once forced to resign from his post as editor of the Jesuit magazine America, lauded the retirement decision. “These days medicine can keep a Pope alive beyond his capacity to handle the affairs of office,“ he said. “It’s good and it’s important that he was humble enough to say, ‘You know, God can take care of this. I can step aside, and it’s God’s church, not my church.’” Pursuing humility to the opposite conclusion, R.R. Reno, editor of the more conservative journal First Things, said, “It’s a bad precedent. We don’t want the Pope to become like a CEO, who needs to resign if he becomes ineffective. I think it’s wrong to think that, through our human agency, we can solve the Church’s problem or avoid any institutional suffering.”