Benedict XVI Resigns and Francis Is Elected

On the morning of 11 February 2013 Benedict XVI met the cardinals at the Vatican, in Rome, in a consistory called to decide on three canonizations, and after their vote read a declaration in Latin (Deed for the Pious Transit of Benedict XVI (2023)). He said that he had examined his conscience repeatedly before God, that strength of mind and body were needed to govern the barque of Peter and proclaim the gospel, and that in the last few months his own had declined so far that he had to recognise his incapacity to fulfil the ministry adequately (Benedict XVI, Declaratio (11 February 2013)). “With full freedom” he renounced the ministry of bishop of Rome, so that the see would be vacant from 20:00 on 28 February and a conclave would have to be called (Benedict XVI, Declaratio (11 February 2013)).

At his last general audience, on 27 February, he said that he had taken the step aware of its gravity “and even its novelty” (Benedict XVI, General Audience, 27 February 2013). He was not returning to private life, he said, but would remain in the service of prayer (Benedict XVI, General Audience, 27 February 2013). This wiki tells of an earlier resignation, that of Gregory XII in 1415, in its entry on the Western Schism. Benedict lived his last years in a monastery in the Vatican and died on 31 December 2022 (Deed for the Pious Transit of Benedict XVI (2023)).

On 13 March the cardinals in conclave elected Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires and a Jesuit, aged 76 (Holy See, Biography of Pope Francis). He took the name Francis after Francis of Assisi, and the Holy See’s biography calls him the first pope to come from the Americas (Holy See, Biography of Pope Francis). From the loggia of St Peter’s that evening he told the crowd that the cardinals had gone “to the ends of the earth” to find Rome a bishop, prayed with them for “our Bishop Emeritus, Benedict XVI”, and asked them to pray for him before he gave his blessing (Francis, First Greeting (13 March 2013)).

Francis set out his programme that November in the exhortation Evangelii gaudium (Holy See, Biography of Pope Francis). He wrote of a “missionary option” that would direct the church’s customs and structures to evangelization rather than to its own preservation (Francis, Evangelii gaudium 27). He said that he must think about “a conversion of the papacy”, recalled the hopes of the Second Vatican Council for bishops’ conferences, and held that excessive centralization complicates the church’s life (Francis, Evangelii gaudium 32). He preferred, he wrote, a church “bruised, hurting and dirty” from being out on the streets to one confined and clinging to its own security (Francis, Evangelii gaudium 49).

The Holy See’s biography of Francis says that Francis met his predecessor periodically until two days before Benedict’s death (Holy See, Biography of Pope Francis).