Breaking news on BBC TV: Pope Benedict XVI will resign on February 28. You heard it here first.
I thought popes abdicated, not resigned? Like kings? But BBC keeps using “resign.”
Live boy, or dead girl?
…or should that be swapped for Catholic clergy?
Whoa! Does that even happen? Has it ever happened before?
His declaration says it’s because his “strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”
Dammit, Siam Sam…scooped me by mere minutes.
Not since 1415
Brian
And I saw it first on the Dope…no need for a newsfeed with you lot to keep me up to date with international happenings!
resigning? or did he get chucked into the Vatican death Star reactor by Darth Vader?
yeah, using all that force lightning sure takes its toll
Has the church got any child abuse reports scheduled to come out in mid-March?
Oh you are so going to hell for that…that being said, it was MY first thought as well.
You snooze, you lose. 
This is what he resigns over? After the sex abuse scandals (and whatever else), he’s taking the bold, moral stand to quit because he’s old.
Pope Palin?
This is a huge shock to Catholics (and recovering Catholics). Popes don’t resign, even if they run around the streets of the Vatican buck naked screaming “I am choo-choo train”.
Popes were supposed to die younger, of natural causes due to inadequate medical care, or poisoned. Or both. Nowadays there is a sad dearth of poisonings and access to the best modern medicine can offer gives you a Pope with advanced Parkinson’s and one that is quitting because he’s worn out.
Don’t elect popes well past retirement age.
Maybe he just didn’t want to start looking as sad as John Paul there toward the end.
The ***official ***justification indeed can interpreted as that he saw up close how things went during JP2’s final infirmity, and may feel he does not have his own Ratzinger-equivalent to hold things together as he gets worse. And yes, that includes being physically and mentally sharp enough to handle current ongoing problems and other bad news and crises that they may see coming.
However it would be interesting to have a couple of years with a Retired Pope hanging around. Does he get to hand over the keys, so to speak, personally to the successor?
There will be rumors of scandal, if not more, for weeks and months (and perhaps longer). Any hints if any forthcoming story might have “motivated” the Pope to step down?
I suspect for this reason that in the event it’s not due to some child abuse related thing (and we would not necessarily ever know if it were - I could see a victim staying quiet in return for his/her abuser resigning as head of the church) that he has dementia or a terminal illness that will lead to dementia. The kind of dementia that couldn’t be covered up.