VATICAN CITY
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)
The Vatican’s cardinals were getting ready to leave a meeting to discuss three canonisations, chaired by Pope Benedict XVI, when he announced, in Latin, that he had one other bit of business to attend to.
By Gordon Rayner, and Nick Squires in Rome
8:46PM GMT 11 Feb 2013
From his throne-like chair on a purple dais in the Sala del Concistoro, part of the Apostolic Palace, he quietly told his “fratres carissimi”, or “dear brothers”, that he needed to “communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church”.
Having examined his conscience, he said, he had “come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry”.
His “mind and body” were failing him, and in consequence he had decided to “renounce the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter”.
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