After the Vatican announced Monday that Pope Benedict XVI would resign on Feb. 28, Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron shared his surprise over the news.
"Quickly after the surprise followed sadness, a sense of grief at losing his fatherly care for all us, bishops, clergy, and faithful," Vigneron said in a statement. "Most of us know in our own personal lives what it means to see a parent grow old and decline in ability. That is the sense we bring to this announcement. Our spiritual father has determined, by the best light given to him in prayer, that for the good of us all he must lay down his office."
Benedict appointed Vigneron as the Archbishop in Detroit in 2009.
The pope gave his health as the reason for ending his tenure. Now 85, he was elected at age 78.
"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," he said.
According to the Associated Press, Benedict is the
_Gregory XII: The last pope to resign, Gregory XII stepped down in 1415 to help end a church schism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/papal-resignation-history-popes-who-quit_n_2661640.html" target="_hplink">first pope to resign since 1415.
Like most of my fellow-Catholics I woke this morning to the very surprising news that Our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI is resigning his service as the successor of St. Peter. Quickly after the surprise followed sadness, a sense of grief at losing his fatherly care for all us, bishops, clergy, and faithful. We have come to love him very much and will miss him.
Most of us know in our own personal lives what it means to see a parent grow old and decline in ability. That is the sense we bring to this announcement. Our spiritual father has determined, by the best light given to him in prayer, that for the good of us all he must lay down his office.
It was with the support of our daily prayers that Pope Benedict passed his years in the Chair of Peter and has come to this point. I invite all Catholics to pray all the more ardently for the Holy Father Pope Benedict, that God sustain him in these last weeks of his papacy and guide him through what lies ahead. And we look to the future with confidence, that the Lord who has given us this great pope and loving father, will give us a new shepherd of equal merit.
