Media spin prevented Pope Paul VI from retiring

Friday, August 12th, 2011

The Vatican Insider reports that tired and weary Pope Paul VI gave serious thoughts to stepping down when he turned 80.

Paul VI had gone as far as working out how the retirement would happen, sharing the process with his most trusted aide, Archbishop Giovanni Benelli, whom he was about to appoint as archbishop of Florence.

Of a Benedictine spirituality, his plans went as far as planning to live out his remaining days in the Benedictine monastery in Einseidein, Switzerland.

As well as being exhausted from ten turbulent years as Pontiff, Paul VI also wanted to follow his own requirement of cardinals in, “Ingravescentem Aetatem,” which stated that they should leave their effective duties at aged 80, and leave the group of cardinals called on to elect the new pope as well.

However, according to the Vatican Insider, having named his trusted aide, Benelli, as Archbishop of Florence, other Vatican officials ‘dissuaded’ Paul VI from retiring.

Labelling the reasons for Paul VI’s non-resignation as ‘complex,’ and ‘imbued with humanity and entirely human calculations,’ the Vatican Insider re-tells the event like a mystery thriller.

With Vatican strongman, Benelli, the real perpetrator of Paul VI’s directions, gone to Florence, Mons Pasquale Macchi, special secretary, Cardinal Jean Villot, secretary of state and Don Virgillo Levi, vice director of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, thought it was time for them to have more of a say in Vatican affairs, and so they organised for the Paul VI’s resignation decision to be withdrawn.

So all of sudden, out of the blue, on the front page of the L’Osservatore an article by Levi claimed that “malign voices” were talking of Paul VI’s resignation, that these voices had ‘no basis,’ and that the rumours were not true because “one does not give up the Cross of Christ, and the universal fatherhood of the Successor of Peter…”

The world responded, and Paul VI received many messages urging him to continue as Pope and to carry the heavy weight of the cross of Christ on his shoulders.

Paul VI’s died during his summer holiday at Castelgandolfo. It occurred less than a year after his 80th birthday.

Sources