VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Even after Pope Francis’ doctors said he was showing slight signs of improvement and the Vatican reported that he had met in the hospital with top aides to do some work, questions persisted about the possibility of his resignation.
In December 2022, Pope Francis had told the Spanish newspaper ABC that he long ago prepared a letter of resignation in case he became too ill or infirm to carry out the duties of the papacy.
Meeting with Jesuits in Congo a few months later, one of his confreres asked him if he was planning on stepping down.
“Look,” he said, “it’s true that I wrote my resignation two months after I was elected and delivered this letter to Cardinal (Tarcisio) Bertone. I don’t know where this letter is. I did it in case I had some health problem that would prevent me from exercising my ministry and was not fully conscious and able to resign.”
“However,” he added, “this does not at all mean that resigning popes should become, let’s say, a ‘fashion,’ a normal thing.”
The late Pope Benedict XVI “had the courage to do it because he did not feel up to continuing due to his health,” the pope said, but “I believe that the pope’s ministry is ‘ad vitam’ (for life). I see no reason why it should not be so.”
In his interview with the Spanish newspaper that started the whole discussion on his potential resignation, Pope Francis noted that St. Paul VI had written a similar letter.
And the postulator of St. John Paul II’s sainthood cause, Msgr. Slawomir Oder, in 2010 published the letters Pope John Paul prepared in 1989 and in 1994 offering the College of Cardinals his resignation in case of an incurable disease or other condition that would prevent him from fulfilling his ministry.
Still, both St. Paul VI and St. John Paul continued to serve as pope until their deaths.
Canon law states that a pope can resign, but it stipulates that the papal resignation must be “made freely and properly manifested”—conditions that would be difficult to ascertain if a pope were already incapacitated.
Although Pope Benedict XVI was clearly not incapacitated when, in 2013, he became the first pope in almost 600 years to resign, even his announcement raised doubts and questions in the minds of many Catholics.
Church law prescribes no formula for such an announcement. It simply says: “If it happens that the Roman Pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone.”
In drafting his letters five years apart, St. John Paul referred to the letter written by St. Paul VI and dated May 2, 1965.
Pope Paul said he was writing “aware of our responsibility before God and with a heart full of reverence and of charity, which unite us to the holy Catholic Church, and not unmindful of our evangelical mission to the world.”
“In case of infirmity, which is believed to be incurable or is of long duration and which impedes us from sufficiently exercising the functions of our apostolic ministry; or in the case of another serious and prolonged impediment,” Pope Paul wrote, he renounced his office “both as bishop of Rome as well as head of the same holy Catholic Church.”
St. John Paul’s 1994 text, included in Msgr. Oder’s book, said he had prayed and reflected long on what a pope about to celebrate his 75th birthday should do as far as making provisions in the event of “an incurable illness or impediment such as to hinder the exercise of the duties of the successor of Peter.”
Undergoing surgery in 1992 for the removal of an intestinal tumor, the pope wrote, made him think that “the heavenly Father might have wanted to take care of the problem himself” before he could become incapacitated. “But it was not the case,” he wrote, as the tumor was benign.
So, the text continues, “following in the footsteps of my predecessor, I already have put in writing my will to renounce the sacred and canonical office of Roman Pontiff in the case of infirmity that is presumed incurable and prevents the exercise of the functions of the Petrine ministry.”
“Outside of these hypotheses, I feel a serious obligation of conscience to continue to fulfill the task to which Christ the Lord has called me as long as, in the mysterious plan of his providence, he desires,” St. John Paul’s 1994 text said.
