Complete Text of Pope’s Resignation Announcement

“Dear Brothers,

I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.

Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects. And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff. With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.”

Comments

[Ryan]

I'm sure this will make someone mad, but considering that the Catholic church was recently in the news for grave robbing (siphoning off $115 million from cemetery maintenance funds which were funded by the relatives of the dead) to pay reparations to the victims of child-raping priests, and the coming to light of the fact that the church is sitting on top of a real estate empire they bought with money for recognizing Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italian government, I'm disinclined to feel sympathy for Ratzi or the church.

There's also the several dozen other scandals.

I think it should be scandalous that George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative is allowed to go on, or that Barack Obama was allowed to expand it. This program siphons off over a billion and a half dollars, PER YEAR, from the tax payers, to give to the Catholic church alone.

It's supposed to be going to do "charity" work, but I feel that it's just enabling them to sit pretty and divert most of it to things like the Kiddie Diddler Priest payoffs.

Also, does someone want to tell them that their condom policy is causing misery, starvation, and is fueling the HIV/AIDS epidemic, especially in poor countries?

They're just too much of a force for evil in this world.

And at the same time their priests are doing horrible things to children, and the church leadership actively tries to cover it up and shuffle them around the country in a flight to escape justice, they DARE say the things they say about gay people.

How do these "one billion" Catholics apologize for this? How?

And they go around protecting the church from criticism on the internet. It's just like Scientology vs. The Internet.

There was a video on Youtube that was very unflattering to Pope Ratzi, so the Catholics banded together and flagged it "unsafe for children".

I do not have a Google account. I don't log in to Youtube. So how do I view that video?

That takes me into an argument that we need a non-US based rival to Youtube. The DMCA abuse and the censorship based on hurt feelings has basically made it worthless.

But that's a different subject. ;)

[Ryan]

You know, I said all that and managed to forget this.

Sinead O'Connor tried warning America about the Catholic church when she did that Saturday Night Live protest of them back in the 1990s, where she held up a picture of John Paul II and ripped it up and said "Fight the real enemy".

The Catholics pressured them to censor the reruns, and so they replaced it with video of the dress rehearsal. The censored version even made it onto the DVD.

Disgusting.