Cardinals have begun informal contacts to discuss who should next
lead the Catholic Church through a period of major crisis as the
Vatican said it planned a big send-off for Pope Benedict XVI before he
became the first pontiff in centuries to resign.
At
a news conference on how the Pope plans to spend the next two weeks
before he steps out of the limelight, the Vatican also disclosed that he
had been wearing a pacemaker since before he was elected in 2005.
It said no specific illness led the 85-year-old to resign, merely old age and diminishing mental and physical strength.
It also said he would not play any role in the running of the Church after his Feb 28 resignation.
“The Pope has said in his declaration that he will use his time for
prayer and reflection and will not have any responsibility for guidance
of the Church or any administrative or government responsibility,” said
Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi.
“This is absolutely
clear and this is the sense of the resignation,” he said, adding that
he would “not intervene in any way” in trying to influence the choice of
his successor.
The Vatican has changed venues of some papal
activities so more people can see him before the resignation. Today,
the Pope was to have led an Ash Wednesday service at a small church in
Rome but the event has been moved to St Peter’s Basilica for what will
likely be his last Mass in public.
His last general audience,
scheduled for the day before his resignation, has moved from the
Vatican’s audience hall, which has a capacity of 10,000 people, to St
Peter’s Square, which can hold hundreds of thousands.
After he
leaves office, he will go first to the papal summer residence south of
Rome and then to a cloistered convent inside the Vatican walls.
In mid-March, about 115 cardinals will enter the Sistine Chapel to
elect the next leader of the world’s 1.2bn Roman Catholics.
After a string of scandals, Church experts say cardinals will be
looking for someone who is not only holy but a good administrator.
“A lot of cardinals will tell you off the record if you ask them for
their private assessment of this pope that personally he was a great
man, holy, genuine, honest, and humble and that his teachings will stand
the test of time,” said John Allen, author of several books on the
Vatican.
“But they will also say that there was a regime
around Benedict XVI that did not know how to make the trains run on time
and they were often left to pick up the pieces of bombs that exploded
here.”
Speculation has grown that the Church could appoint
its first non-European leader to reflect the growing weight of regions
such as Africa or Latin America, which account for 42% of the world’s
Catholics.