Vatican City: Pope Benedict XVI, who will step down next week
because his age is impairing his ability to govern, is the first
pontiff in more than 700 years to formally resign because he can
no longer carry on. There has been only one other pope to resign
his duties in similar circumstances in the Church’s 2,000-year
history, but numerous popes were deposed, exiled or forced to
step down. Four popes died in exile or in prison, six were
assassinated, two died of wounds received during riots and one
was killed when a roof collapsed. The only previous pope to step
down because he considered himself unable to continue was
Celestine V, a simple hermit who was elected against his will in
1294 to end a deadlock among cardinals and resigned after just
five months. Celestine V, or Pietro del Morrone, had been a
Benedictine monk, renowned for renouncing worldly goods for a
barren life in a mountain cave in the Abruzzo region in central
Italy. When he wrote to the bickering cardinals after the death
of Pope Nicholas IV