Announcing the decision during a routine gathering of cardinals, he uttered “ingravescente aetate”, the Latin term for advancing age.
“I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise” of leading the world’s one billion Roman Catholics, stated The New York Times quoting Pope Benedict.
It was in 2013 that the world came to a near standstill after Benedict XVI, the 265th pope of the Roman Catholic Church, resigned from the papacy.
The German-born pontiff was presiding over a pro-forma meeting of cardinals to set dates for three upcoming canonisations on February 11.
While others rose to leave the Consistory Hall of the Apostolic Palace after the ceremony, Benedict remained seated, retrieved a single sheet of paper and commenced reading.
In his German-laced Latin, he stated that his “strengths, due to advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”
His resignation took effect at 8:00 pm Vatican time on February 28, at which point he ceased to be pope and assumed the title “Pope Emeritus.”
He departed the Vatican and initially stayed at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence, before retiring to the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery within Vatican City.
At the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, he vowed to devote his life to meditation and prayer.
Before Benedict, Pope Gregory XII was the last pontiff to have resigned from the post in 1415 driven by the need to quell the Great Western Schism, a leadership crisis in which three individuals were vying for the position of pope.