In letter, Benedict describes rumors surrounding his resignation “absurd”

From Reuters: 

Former Pope Benedict, in one of the few times he has broken his silence since stepping down nearly a year ago, has branded as “absurd” fresh media speculation that he was forced to quit.

Church law says a pope’s resignation is valid only if he takes the decision in full freedom and without pressure from others.

“There is absolutely no doubt regarding the validity of my resignation from the Petrine ministry,” Benedict, 86, who now has the title “pope emeritus,” said in a letter to the Italian website Vatican Insider published on Wednesday.

“The only condition for the validity of my resignation is the complete freedom of my decision. Speculation regarding its validity is simple absurd,” he wrote in answer to a request by the website for comment on recent Italian media reports.

Benedict announced his decision to resign on February 11, 2013 and formally stepped down on February 28, becoming the first pope in 600 years to do so. Two weeks later, Francis was elected the first non-European pope in 1,300 years.

Benedict said at the time that he was stepping down because he no longer had the physical and spiritual strength to run the 1.2 billion member Church and that his decision had been taken in full freedom.

Earlier this month on the day after the first anniversary of the announcement of the resignation, Italian newspaper Libero ran a long story reviving speculation that Benedict may have been forced to resign because of scandals in the Vatican.

…Libero also suggested that Benedict chose to continue to wear white because he still felt like he was a pope.

Benedict, who lives in near-total isolation inside a former convent on the Vatican grounds, was also asked about this and responded:

“I continue to wear a white cassock and kept the name Benedict for purely practical reasons. At the moment of my resignation there were no other cloths available. In any case, I wear the white cassock in a visibly different way to how the Pope (Francis) wears it. This is another case of completely unfounded speculation.”

Read it all.  And the complete piece from Vatican Insider is right here. 

Meantime, there’s this from the Benedict Desk: a lengthy interview with his secretary Archbishop Georg Gänswein who describes Benedict’s relationship with Francis and puts to rest any suggestion that the retired pontiff is jealous of his successor.

A snip:

“Pope Francis’s style is quite different, though that doesn’t mean that the content is better,” Gänswein said. “But his style created much interest among the faithful and also outside of the church.

the two men, Gänswein suggested, were apparently becoming friends: Benedict’s “esteem [for Pope Francis] is very high. And it has grown because of the courage of the new pope, week after week. At the beginning, they did not know each other very well. But then Pope Francis phoned him, wrote him, visited him, phoned him again and invited him [to private meetings], so that their contact became very personal and confidential.”

Although Benedict was often pilloried by the press, Gänswein said the retired pope was not bitter about the transformation of Francis over the past year from a little-known Argentine cardinal to a global media darling. “The Pope Emeritus Benedict is well aware of the fame of his successor, but he’s not jealous because he sees that celebrity as helping the faithful,” Gänswein said…

…Asked whether Benedict was reflecting on his tumultuous tenure as pope — and whether he viewed his papacy as a success — Gänswein said Benedict’s eight years as pope “were not easy years, for many reasons. The pope emeritus has pondered much about this. The measure of his own success is not the way the media wrote about him, whether they appreciated him or not.

“Success is not the right angle from which to judge a papacy,” Gänswein added. “He planted lots of seeds, and you can’t immediately see the seed, but only after nature’s done her work you can see what grows from them.”