God told me to resign papacy, says Benedict
THE Pope Emeritus has said that God told him to resign in a ‘‘mystical experience’’.
Benedict XVI, who became Pope in 2005 but resigned in February, confided to a rare visitor who requested anonymity, the Zenit news agency said.
‘‘God told me,’’ Benedict told the visitor at his retirement home in a converted convent in the Vatican.
Benedict said he did not have a vision but a ‘‘mystical experience’’ in which God implanted in his heart an ‘‘absolute desire’’ to remain alone with him in prayer.
He said that the charisma of his successor, Pope Francis, proved that his de- cision to resign was ‘‘the will of God’’.
Benedict, 86, had previously said that failing health led to his decision to live ‘‘hidden from the world’’. He may also have felt overwhelmed by the ‘‘Vatileaks’’ scandal: an investigation after his butler gave confidential papers to the media reportedly identified a ‘‘gay lobby’’ inside the Vatican.
Pope Francis recently told reporters that Benedict, who lives only several hundred yards away from him in the old Mater Ecclesiae convent on the Vatican hill, felt like a member of his family.
‘‘For me he is like having a grandfather at home: my father,’’ the Pope said. ‘‘If I had a difficulty or something I didn’t understand, I would telephone him, ‘Tell me, can I do that?’’’ he said.
‘‘And when I went to talk about that big problem of ‘Vati-leaks’, he told me everything with simplicity.’’
Four women who attended Benedict during his papacy still care for him. At the weekend he visited the papal summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo outside Rome.
Francis has refused to move to the magnificent lakeside house for the summer, as his predecessors did, instead continuing to work at his modest new home in the Vatican guesthouse.