Thousands gathered in Vatican City to witness Pope Benedict XVI make his final public address as the 265th Pope. Pope Benedict was recently plastered on every newspaper for being the first Leader of the Church to resign in 600 years.
The Pope who resigned before Benedict was Pope Gregory XII whose resignation in 1405 was due to a conflict in which three other men claimed to be rightful Pope.
The entire charade of Pope Benedict’s resignation hasn’t settled right with me ever since I heard the news.
Just consider this for a moment. There are an estimated 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, according to BBC news. There is one man, the Pope, who is the designated leader of the entire Catholic Church. The Pope leads about one-seventh of the human race, and he resigns because of “advanced age”?
Wouldn’t it be more traditional and noble to die as the Pope, the same way over 200 leaders of the church have done before him?
The week before his resignation, he also issued several papal pronouncements. One of which changed the Catholic opposition of homosexuality, saying that, “it is foolish to condemn some to eternal torment for simply loving those whom God has helped them to love.”
This was amongst six other pronouncements, all which happened directly after each other leading up to the day of the Pope’s official day of resignation.
I’m not going to toss around speculation or opinions of his actual motives for resigning. Although, I do believe that there is more than meets the eye in terms of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation.