As a frail Pope John Paul II marked his seventh day in hospital on Tuesday, with no news yet on his eventual release, comments by the Vatican’s top official brought the question of the 84-year-old’s possible resignation — an old Vatican taboo — into the open.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the pope’s 77-year-old Secretary of State, left the question hanging in the air late on Monday when journalists asked him whether, during his current health crisis, the pope has considered stepping down.
Sodano significantly did not dismiss the idea out of hand, as Vatican watchers have almost come to expect.
”Let’s leave that to the pope’s conscience,” Sodano said.
The comment reverberated around Rome early on Tuesday. The Corriere della Sera said ”the taboo question has returned to circulate around the Vatican”.
While Italy’s main newspapers posed the question on their front pages, they were careful to place Sodano’s comment, which preceded fulsome praise and support for the pope, in its context.
”John Paul II has not changed his mind. He has no intention of renouncing his responsibility, even if his illness is progressing,” wrote commentator Vittorio Messori in the Corriere della Sera.
La Stampa was surprised by Sodano’s comment.
”Will the pope resign? He can, as canon law allows him to, but what do his closest collaborators think? What did his Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, intend by his comments yesterday after he has seen the pontiff? That resignations are possible, or maybe imminent?
”If you ask me, all these questions are futile, because the answer has already been given, very clearly, many times.”
The answer is, of course, ”certainly not”. The pope used his appearance at his hospital window on Sunday to show Vatican cardinals and Roman Catholics throughout the world that he is still in charge, however frail.
”Even here in hospital, surrounded by other sick people … I am continuing to serve the church and the whole of humanity,” he said in a message he was too weak to read himself and had to leave to an aide.
In an earlier speech at the opening of a new wing of the Vatican library, La Stampa pointed out, Sodano had recalled that Pope Leo XIII had lived, and remained pope, until the age of 92.
”Let us pray for a long life and for serenity for the holy father. The affection of the children of the church is the best medicine for him.
”I remember that, reading the work of Saint John Chrysostom [(a fourth-century Greek preacher], that, contrary to what happens in society, in the church, the old age is very useful.”
In recent years, a succession of cardinals, including German Cardinal Karl Lehmann, Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels and Austria’s Cardinal Christoph Schonborn have spoken of the possibility of the pope’s resignation in response to questions from journalists.
On Thursday, recently retired Brazilian bishop Pedro Casaldaliga (77) said the pope should resign too.
”We who are old, we are subject to limitations, we don’t have the same strength or the same lucidity we once had,” said the prelate, for whom the pope named a replacement from his hospital bed only last week.
Meanwhile, the Vatican said the pontiff’s condition is steadily improving, although doctors have ordered him to stay in hospital at least until the end of the week.
He was rushed to hospital last Tuesday night with acute flu-related breathing difficulties. — Sapa-AFP