Did Pope Benedict Truly Resign?

David Martin | The Daily Knight

Throughout the years ending with his death on December 31, 2022, Pope Benedict XVI told his biographer Peter Seewald that he was forced to step down from the Chair of Peter. While it is generally believed that poor health was the reason for his resignation, Benedict clarified to Seewald that his failing health was due to extreme pressures being placed on him to resign.

In Seewald's biography Benedict XVI, His Life, he reveals that Benedict told him that wicked cardinals pressured him into vacating the Chair of Peter. A cruel and radical-left clique in the Vatican used threats and extortion to get him to leave the papacy.

While Benedict was coerced into stepping down, he never relinquished his office. His stepping down can be compared to one who gives up driving his car while continuing to possess a valid driver license. Benedict gave up the active ministry of driving the Barque of Peter while continuing to retain his papal license (office).

Consider Benedict’s own words delivered on the eve of his resignation.  

“Anyone who accepts the Petrine ministry no longer has any privacy. He belongs always and completely to everyone, to the whole Church... The ‘always’ is also a ‘forever’ – there can no longer be a return to the private sphere. My decision to resign the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this.” (Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, February 27, 2013)

Note that Benedict says his office was never revoked. Church law states that a pope must fully give up his office in order for his resignation to be valid. (Canon 332) Benedict makes it clear that he chose to retain his office "forever," which is why he continued to wear the papal garb and to go by the name Benedict XVI.

Hence, if Benedict XVI never fully resigned it means that Francis was never a pope since two popes cannot coexist. The plan of the aforementioned clique was to oust Benedict and install Francis. 1 They were demanding that he leave.

Foul Play

This coincides with a report from February 10, 2012 – almost one year to the day before Benedict XVI announced his resignation – which said that Benedict was given only one year to live if he didn't resign. The Telegraph UK reported that Cardinal Paolo Romeo, Archbishop of Palermo, said these things to a group of people in Beijing toward the end of 2011.

"His remarks were expressed with such certainty and resolution that the people he was speaking to thought, with a sense of alarm, that an attack on the Pope's life was being planned," the report said. 

The extraordinary comments were written up in a top-secret report, dated Dec. 30, 2011, and delivered to the Pope by a senior cardinal, Dario Castrillon Hoyos, in January 2012. The report was written in German, apparently to limit the number of people in the Vatican who would understand it if inadvertently leaked. It warned of a "Mordkomplott" – death plot – against Benedict.

Vatican Investigation Now Underway

Hence, if this and other like abuses were responsible for Pope Benedict’s resignation it was not a valid resignation. And lo and behold, a Vatican investigation is now underway to officially determine the validity of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation in 2013. This has been confirmed by the Vatican’s Office of the Promoter of Justice, which is responsible for conducting criminal investigations for the tribunal of the Vatican City State. Professor Allesandro Diddi who heads the office, is spearheading this move in the wake of widespread allegations that Benedict XVI never renounced his papal office or munus.

Only let us pray that foul play doesn’t enter upon the investigation where it is used to “prove” that Benedict did fully resign so that the Vatican deep state can try bind the Church into honoring the validity of Pope Francis.

1. According Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis (UDG), any such conduct among bishops and cardinal electors renders a papal election null.