Oh, BS.
The Holy Father is 90 years old, blind in one eye, and in frail health. He has earned some rest in retirement.

If the Guardian wants to report on Gay Scandals, they should like at this White House Administration, and especially at the very odd Barack Obama-Reggie Love relationship.

But then such reporting would have nasty payback for John Hooper, and the Church is an easy target to such libel because it endures without fighting back.

The Guardian and John Hooper are cowards.

Actually, he´s 85. I think he´s frail and doesn´t have the energy to put up with all the nonsense.

I thought the media cherish buggery.

The article intimates that it was lay people (presumably homosexual or in a position to know about homosexual shenanigans of Vatican clerics) who were engaged in the blackmail.

I´m not sure the reason the Pope abdicated is because of some blackmailed clerics. Honestly, that´s a stretch. It´s not as if this type of scandal and worse hasn´t been going on for decades.

I think his age and increasing infirmity had more to do with it, as he himself said.

I assume the pope would rather a new, younger man deal with the crisis.

It´s unheard of for a Pope to retire. The Tabloids have to find something to make it interesting.

I have to admit I wondered about this. I remember Pope John Paul XXIII. He was on his deathbed and we got reports of what he was seeing as he died. Why does this pope have to quit if he´s so sick? All the other popes stayed til they died.

Was this article written as an eighth grade exercise into topic research? This article has the depth of substance of about a rain puddle. Silly, worthless read.

Look at it this way ... they´d be eligible to become Boy Scout leaders. /s

#7 - He doesn´t "have to" resign. He chose to, and it´s really no one´s business why he did.

The butler betraying family secrets and blackmail, sounds more like an episode of Downton Abbey?
Who wouldn´t want to retire and let someone else handle this new scandal. At least he had the integrity to investigate it.
The good news is that they feel like there are too many people watching out for young boys now, so they are turning to adult men.
The surprise is that anyone still contributes their hard earned money to support this.

Speaking of religious leaders and homosexual escapades, I think I remember Larry Sinclair´s story describing something like this from the 80s in Chicago.

The Guardian is only reporting what the daily Rome paper La Repubblica is reporting on a dossier generated in the Vatican itself by three cardinals delegated to look into the Vatican leaks situation.

The term "taken the decision" is Brit for "made the decision". The pope made his own decision to resign.

The sooner they announce a new, traditional Pope, the better. The cafeteria Roman Catholics can howl and threaten to leave the church (which they don´t attend, save Easter) and the rest of us will go on. Ah, to be liberal and live without principles.

#13--I think you are misunderstanding staff´s comment. The leftist attack on the church is unending , and it is typical of them to look for something nasty in the Pope´s decision . Scurrilous innuendoes are in their dna, and staff knows this.

just a WAG, 13 - but I read it as a comment on the media making the leap from an elderly ailing man choosing to retire alllll the way to a CEO opting to get out of Dodge in advance of potential embarrassment and/or blame.

If the publicized ´´why´´ doesn´t fit their agenda, media will find a ´´why´´ that does.

just sayin´...

There´s much we don´t know about the Pope and his resigning. I´m a Believer, though not a Catholic. I have respect for the Catholic Church and for the Pope. His resigning in the best interest of the Church seems fine to me. That there are sexually deviant people in the priesthood is a sad fact. And if the late Father Malachi Martin is correct, there are even worshippers of Satan within the priesthood. All of these negatives within the institution do not negate in any way the faithful service in God´s name that the many priests and the heirarchy have offered nor the faith of the Catholic believers. The Guardian is probably happy to see something negative in the Church, though I´d guess it´s something of a dilemma for the Guardian (and its readers) to criticize homosexuality. I´d think they´d praise it.

I´m a practicing Catholic -- and I´ll get it right at some point -- and I say God bless our Holy Father. You have earned some R&R....

Peace be with you -- Holy Father....

LZK

The facts are that Benedict began hinting that he might decide to resign a couple of years ago and the reasons have far more to do with the public duties of the Papacy than behind the scenes intrigue in the Vatican.

Please remember that in Church terms the idea that Catholic priests and bishops must retire - and that Cardinals over age 80 shouldn´t get to pick the next Pope -are very new developments, dating only from the 1970s. Reviving an old tradition that Popes may resign when unable to perform all the acts of their ministry is merely a continuance of these reforms. I applaud the Pope for recognizing that he is not indispensable and wish more people in all walks of life would follow his example.

"a seething hotbed of intrigue and infighting"

Now that sounds like the Vatican. The church is run by human beings. There´s the rub.

#11...Larry Sinclair and his assertions regarding Barack Obama were in 2000´s not the 80´s....

People are living longer, that is a fact.
Better to re-introduce retirement into the Papacy, than to have a Pope with dementia or Alzeihmers staying on with NOTHING in place to have him removed. The Church cannot ever be left rudderless.
Benedict is doing the right thing.

Thank you, #16. It is becoming increasingly rare to see the Catholic Church defended, even by other Christians.

When an 85-year-old person in poor health resigns as CEO of a corporation of a few hundred people, anyone who thinks about it says, "I understand". This is a CEO of an organization of over a billion people, and conspiracy theories abound.

I´m wondering why he´s the first Pope in 600 years smart enough to step down when his health fails.

The tabloids have descended on Pope Benedict´s retirement like buzzards gathering around fresh roadkill. The Pope and Vatican are currently too focused on the upcoming conclave and transition to be distracted by combating anti-Catholic rumor-mongering and Socialist anti-religion propaganda.

Remember the statement about evil flourishing when good men do nothing? Such is the state of our nation right now, in fact. But I have always been heartened by the history of our Popes in the Catholic Church. Many evil ones got elected throughout the ages, but somehow the Holy Spirit got us past the evil, and good men prevailed. I firmly believe that this good man, Pope Benedict, knows the history and magnitude of his Office, and is humble enough to let go and allow a stronger man to be out Pope. We have so much evil to fight in this world today. For instance, take this nasty, very typical msm article.

Let´s face it, anybody in the Vatican knows all about child molestation, covert gay activities. At any given time, it´s simply which one of these costumed guys takes the fall. Like Elisha Cook in THE MALTESE FALCON when Sidney Greenstreet picks Elisha to take the fall in their crooked scheme. Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, the brilliant pamphlet that united all the colonies, the pamphlet that the communists took out of our public schools years ago, Paine wrote this about the Catholic Church. His article on the pretense, evil, of Rome, was published in both Paris and London, written in 1797 in a pamphlet by Thomas Paine, his answer to the restoration of Catholic privileges, A brief excerpt, "Were not they considered as the patrons of debauchery and domestic infidelity, and not as the patrons of morals? What was their pretended celibacy but perpetual adultery? What was their blasphemous pretension to forgive sins but an encouragement to the commitment of them, and a love for their own? Accustom a people to believe that priests or any other class of men can forgive sins, and you will have sin in abundance." Tom Paine saw the truth and wrote extensively about it.

#28 don´t think there is a need for that, many on that forum are of Catholic faith. #16 I am with you on what Father Malachi Martin had to say especially Jesuits. There is also another interesting theory out there, apparently in EU there is a warrant on BXVI and an apatite for all the church properties. Wonder if there would be enough faithful ready to defend the Church if the events repeat themselves...

Amazing amount of ignorance around here these days.

I am not Catholic but a longtime watcher of the Vatican. The Pope is not only a religious leader but a world leader. Stepping into the role, one would imagine many secrets are revealed, same as for, say, POTUS. Perhaps the secrets revealed to the present Pope have him overwhelmed, especially at his frail age and state of health. Like Roberto Duran back in the day, he is throwing up his hands, with the comment of "No Mas, No Mas." (I always respected Duran for leaving what had become a circus.)

Thomas Paine...atheist...agnostic...i´ll get right on his readings and beliefs.

If the Pope decideds to retire..he may do so.It has been done before. I am sure he has prayed hard and long about this decision.
Let him be...He has his reasons. I would rather see the Pope retire then not be able to handle the stress..it happens to the best of us..

There have been scandals in the Vatican for 2000 years. The scandals used to be illegitimate children fathered with mistresses, but lately, the clergy seems to be attracting homosexuals rather than straight men. I wonder if the church allowing women priests would change anything? Or allowing priests to marry? Asking these men to be celibate for life is asking a lot.

I bet B-16 is really ill. He had a fall, blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, looks like a TIA. His tailors have had to alter the vestments because he has dropped so much weight.
Maybe he wants to write while inretirement or just put his feet up or go into the hospital quietly to get somethings attended to.

My read on it: most previous popes had a cadre of loyal subordinate cardinals who, as their health declined in old age, would honor them and administer the affairs of the church as would the pope himself.

Benedict finds himself surrounded by men of conflicting motives, politicians he does not trust. By abdicating now, his tenure will be viewed by history only for his actions and judgments. He knows his ministry and reputation could be besmirched by the actions of untrustworthy men acting in his name after he is too weak to carry on.

Perhaps, the Holy Father, because of his age and his overall physical condition feels that he can no longer effectively guide the Church through the times ahead and that the best way to SERVE the people of God is to spend the rest of his life cloistered in prayer..praying for the people of God and the leadership of the Church. We call him Holy Father, but we also call him the servant of the servants of God. He´s been Martha for most of his life, actively serving the Church, now, perhaps he is being guided to be Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus and taking in His every word. Pray for us, dear Holy Father.

Why did Pope "Benedict abdicate?

See "Ockham´s razor":""when you have competing theories that make exactly the same predictions,the simpler one is the better."

But for the MSM, then there would be no scandal to berate and try to undermine the Catholic Church with: which is the last approved prejudice in the decadent Western Civilization.

Incidentally: The Boston Globe which thought it would improve its bottom line by campaigning to undermine and bring the church to its knees, is itself well on the way to be consigned to the dustbin of history. Stalin once famously asked "and how many (military) divisions has the Pope?" Where is Stalin? Where is the Mighty Soviet Union?.

Gay behavior involves about 1% of the population. They cause chaos far out of proportion to their numbers.

#28 ("Let´s face it, anybody in the Vatican knows all about child molestation, covert gay activities.")

From what alternate reality does this assertion emanante? The Vatican is a huge bureaucracy, which often has officials in different branches actually announcing contradictory things at the same time. There isn´t anybody who knows everything that´s going on there, except folks who are so obsessed with notions of Catholic Conspiracy as to spend all their time digging through the daily news and announcements, rather than get anything productive done with their lives.

The West inherited more than its legal system from the Church. We inherited malignant bureaucracy, as well. There is no ´puppet master´ behind the whole operation, no matter how satisfying that thought might be to some.