Benedict XVI stifles rumours regarding his resignation

NDREA TORNIELLI
Vatican Insider
2/19/2012

“Pray also for me, that I may continually offer to the People of God the witness of sound doctrine and guide holy Church with a firm and humble hand.” The Pope that imposed the red biretta on the 22 new cardinals yesterday morning was gentle but firm, concluding his speech with a message that seemed to indirectly deny his forthcoming resignation. A number of people have been hinting at his resignation, particularly since the tensions in the Vatican, the leaked documents and the poisonous comments going round in an attempt to discredit one cardinal or another. All this portrays the Vatican as a place rife with scheming and people dossier fights. “It is not easy to enter into the logic of the Gospel and to let go of power and glory,” Benedict XVI repeated to the College of Cardinals, pointing out a different path yet again.

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The words pronounced by Benedict XVI, who is well aware of the situation, relativized the current context. The Pope does not intend to flee at the sight of his foes, wants to get back to the heart of things; he sees the Church as a community of faithful, praying and trying to get close to God, he does not see them as a political and cultural phalanx or as a group of people planning conquest strategies. When one looks at what is going on in the Holy See, the message regarding the human shortcomings of clerics that the then cardinal Ratzinger had pronounced during the Jubilee, still ring true today. He recalled Cardinal Consalvi’s (Secretary of State during the pontificate of St. Pius VII) response to an ambassador who informed him of Napoleon’s intention to destroy the Church: “He will never manage to destroy it. Even we were not able to.”

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