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Benedict Will Live in Vatican City, but Many Details Remain Undecided
(about 9 hours later)
ROME — A day after Pope Benedict XVI stunned Roman Catholics by announcing that he would resign at the end of the month, the Vatican disclosed new details about his physical well-being on Tuesday, saying that he had been fitted with a heart pacemaker a decade ago but that the procedure had not influenced his decision to become the first pope in almost 600 years to step down.
ROME — Though it may have come as a shock Monday to the world’s one billion-plus Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI’s plan to retire on Feb. 28 appears to have been in the works for some time, and was known to a handful of close advisers.
The disclosure about the device, whose existence was not widely known, came as the Vatican grappled with a series of logistical questions raised by a decision that gave Benedict just 17 days to wind up his almost eight-year papacy.
Still unclear, however, are some of the practical consequences of Benedict’s decision, Vatican officials acknowledged Tuesday, from how the former pope will be addressed, to what to do with the papal ring used to seal important documents, traditionally destroyed upon a pope’s death.“There are a series of questions that remain to be seen, also on the part of the pope himself, even if it is a decision that he had made some time ago,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said at a news conference. “How he will live afterward, which will be very different from how he lives now, will require time and tranquillity and reflection and a moment of adaptation to a new situation.”
At a news conference, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the pacemaker was installed while the pope was still a cardinal, before his election as pope in 2005. The batteries were replaced three months ago in a routine procedure that did not influence the pope’s thinking about resigning, Father Lombardi said.
Even though the Code of Canon Law allows popes to resign, the occurrence was rare enough to have caught Vatican officials off guard, including on issues like the protocol and potentially awkward logistics of having a former pope and his successor share a backyard.
“This did not weigh on his decision,” Father Lombardi said. “It is more about his forces diminishing.”
When he leaves the papacy at the end of the month, Benedict will retire to his summer home in Castel Gandolfo, in the hills outside Rome, before moving to the Mater Ecclesiae convent, a plain, four-story structure built 21 years ago to serve as an international place “for contemplative life within the walls of Vatican City,” as it is described on a Vatican Web site.
When he announced his resignation on Monday, the pope cited advancing years and weakness, saying his strength “has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.”
Workers began transforming the building into a residence in November, after the cloistered nuns who had occupied the convent left, Father Lombardi said. He did not tip his hand about whether the renovations were carried out with the pontiff as the future occupant in mind. “The pope knew this place, this building and thought it was appropriate for his needs,” he said.
Greg Burke, the Vatican’s senior communications adviser, said Benedict was fitted with the pacemaker roughly 10 years ago — a period when Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was the head of the Vatican’s main doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The timing, however, raised suspicions that the pope had been planning the details of his retirement for some time. The editor of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, wrote Monday that the pope had made his decision “many months ago,” after a demanding trip to Mexico and Cuba in March 2012, “and kept with a reserve that no one could violate.”
“You don’t resign because you have a pacemaker or because you have a new battery for a pacemaker,” Mr. Burke said.
Father Lombardi said that the stress of that trip had further convinced the pope that he no longer had the stamina to do the job.
Before his election as pope, some Vatican analysts recalled, the pope spent several years as a close adviser to his ailing predecessor, John Paul II, whose health deteriorated with Parkinson’s disease and other ailments that left him severely debilitated, an example that could have influenced Benedict’s thinking about the effect of infirmity on the papal office.
In fact, the pope had meditated on the possibility of resigning for years. In the 2010 book “Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times,” from a series of interviews conducted by Peter Seewald, a German journalist, Benedict said that if a pope “clearly realized that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of carrying out the duties of his office,” he would have “the right, and under some circumstances also an obligation, to resign.”
Father Lombardi said the pope would continue his day-to-day activities until the end of the month and confirmed that appointments that had already been fixed would be maintained. Some parts of his schedule will be modified to take into account the heightened public interest in the pope during his final days in office, Father Lombardi indicated.
Rumors of his imminent resignation began to appear periodically in the Italian news media in recent years, as the pope appeared increasingly frail in public appearances.
For instance, this week’s commemoration of Ash Wednesday, beginning the 40-day period of Lent preceding Easter, usually takes place in a small church on the Aventine Hill. But this year, it will be conducted in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican instead, to allow a greater number of the faithful to attend, Father Lombardi said.
A Vatican official, who asked not to be named because he was discussing papal business, said that the number of people who had known about the pope’s decision “a long time, could be counted on one hand.” But the pope had informed a small group of other collaborators “in recent days.”
As for his first day following the announcement, Father Lombardi said: “Well, Tuesdays for the pope have always been a day for prayer, study, reflection and preparation of his homilies, and he has a general audience tomorrow, Mass in the afternoon and an important conversation with priests on Thursday. It’s a likely supposition that the pope is working on these reflections that he will make in the next few days, and what he has to do in the coming weeks.”
When he retires to Vatican City, the pope will be able to move freely, Father Lombardi said, though it was “premature” to say how involved he will be in day-to-day activities — like saying Mass — at the Vatican.
But while the pope’s life will be business as usual until the end of his papacy on Feb. 28, officials acknowledge that what comes after is a bit of a work in process.
He would not, however, intervene in the choice of his successor. “You can be sure that the cardinals will be autonomous in their decision and he will have no specific role in this election,” Father Lombardi said, adding that the pope was “a very discreet person.”
Benedict’s announcement on Monday was the first papal resignation in 598 years, and it placed him among a tiny handful of history’s 265 recognized popes to step down. Before Benedict, the last to resign was Gregory XII in 1415, who left after 10 years in office as the church faced a leadership crisis known as the Great Western Schism.
The conclave to choose the next pope will begin 15 to 20 days after the pope resigns, and a new leader of the Roman Catholic Church is expected to be in place by Easter, which falls on March 31 this year.
“There are a series of questions that remain to be seen, also on the part of the pope himself, even if it is a decision that he had made some time ago,” Father Lombardi said. “How he will live afterward, which will be very different from how he lives now, will require time and tranquillity and reflection and a moment of adaptation to a new situation.”
Father Lombardi said the pope would continue to perform his regular duties until the end of the month, and would keep all the appointments on his calendar. Some parts of his schedule will be modified to take into account the heightened public interest in the pope during his final days in office, Father Lombardi indicated.
Even though the canonic code and the Apostolic Constitution of the Holy See regulate the decision to resign from the papacy, the occurrence was rare enough to have caught Vatican officials off guard. The officials, Father Lombardi said, will have to brush up on specific questions, like whether the pope’s papal ring, with which he seals important documents, will be destroyed, as is the case when a pope dies.
For instance, this week’s commemoration of Ash Wednesday, beginning the 40-day period of Lent preceding Easter, usually takes place in a church on the Aventine Hill. But this year it will be conducted in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican instead, to allow a greater number of the faithful to attend, Father Lombardi said.
“We’ve had to take the Apostolic Constitution in hand and look at the norms to see what to do and adapt an unprecedented situation,” he said. “There are lots of questions that are foreseen legally, but we don’t immediately have the answers.”
His final audience, on Feb. 27, will be moved to St. Peter’s Square instead of the usual indoor venue used in winter, “to allow the faithful to say goodbye to the pope.”
The conclave, or gathering of cardinals that will meet to choose the pope’s successor, will take place 15 to 20 days after the resignation becomes official. The pope will “surely” remain silent on the process of electing a successor, Father Lombardi said, and “will not interfere in any way.”
Father Lombardi said that should a new pope be elected before Easter, enabling clergymen to tend to their traditional duties, the Ash Wednesday rite will be the last formal celebration the pope holds in St. Peter’s.
His final audience, on Feb. 27, will be moved to St. Peter’s Square instead of the usual indoor venue used in winter “to allow the faithful to say goodbye to the pope.”
