One Of These Men Will Be The New Pope

This morning comes the shocking news that Pope Benedict XVI intends to resign as Pope later this month after a nearly-eight year reign as Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church.

This is a distressing and–to some degree–unprecedented–move. There are only three examples of Popes resigning in the history of the Church and they all came under extraordinary circumstances, none have done it for reasons of health, which appear to be at the forefront . In 1045, Pope Benedict IX was pressured to resign but was eventually re-installed on the Papal throne because his resignation appeared to be “selling” his office. Pope Celestine V, a reclusive monk, resigned in 1294. He had months earlier declared it permissible for a Pope to resign, establishing the tiny legal precedent that Benedict appears to be exercising now. Finally Pope Gregory XII abdicated the papal throne in 1415 to end the great Western Schism.

Benedict’s own pontificate appears incomplete. His project of re-ordering the Curia Offices (the machinery of the Vatican) seems only half-complete. He has said that one of the missions of his papacy was to heal the schism with a group of Traditionalists, the Society of St. Pius X. That task remains unfinished and seems unlikely to be taken up by his successors. His efforts at reforming the post-Vatican II worship of the Catholic Church seem tenuous and even timid, though he may have provided momentum to the cause.

Of course the next question is who will succeed Pope Benedict XVI? Whoever is chosen by the College of Cardinals at the forthcoming conclave will have the delicate task of governing the Church while his predecessor still lives.

We've gone through the likely names, weighed the odds, and assessed the pros and cons of each possible candidate.