Will the Pope resign? Neither Francis nor the Church entertain the option, except in extreme circumstances

Pope Francis turned 88 last December. He has been in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital for a month with bilateral pneumonia. Although his condition had previously been reported as critical, he appears to have overcome the worst and is on the road to recovery. However, many questions remain, given his age, his frailty, and, above all, the precedent of Benedict XVI’s resignation in 2013, when the former pontiff deemed himself unfit to continue. Neither the Pope nor the Church believes in that option, except in an extreme case. Francis is already the oldest Pope since Leo XIII, who died in 1903 at the age of 93. His hospitalization is the longest for a Pope after John Paul II’s 55 days in 1981.

What is the Pope’s condition?

The Pope is already doing better; it seems the worst is over, and there are no longer any daily medical reports issued by the Vatican’s medical staff. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, admitted on February 14, experienced critical days, but last Monday doctors announced he was out of danger. Since then, his health has been improving. But there is still no date for his discharge from the hospital. Among other reasons, because he still needs assistance to breathe. During the night, he is on mechanical ventilation with a mask, and during the day, with high-flow oxygenation through nasal cannulas. This Monday, Vatican sources indicated for the first time that at times he is breathing unaided, as was evident in the first photo released Sunday. With the recovery from pneumonia, the Pope should regain his independence, but it is unknown to what extent, and there is already talk of the possibility of setting up a medical team in his room at the Santa Marta residence in the Vatican, where he resides. On Monday, Vatican sources reiterated that his medical discharge “is not imminent.”

Will Francis remain fit to govern the Church?

That’s the key question, for which a decisive piece of information is lacking: to determine what condition he’s really in, because just this Sunday the Vatican released the first image of him in a month, and he was facing backward. The only source of information has been the brief medical reports. His voice was also heard — a recorded message broadcast on March 6 — and rather than proving reassuring, it increased concern. His voice was fragile and broken. Indeed, experts explain, the voice practically disappears with pneumonia, at any age. But he should recover. Another question is whether he will need to breathe with a mask, and whether a Pope will be seen using an oxygen tank at public events. In any case, the Pope and the Vatican will adapt to the new situation, with less public exposure and a reduced schedule.

In any case, even in the most difficult moments of his convalescence, Francis has sent clear messages that he remains at the helm of the Catholic Church. Appointments of bishops and other decisions have been made public daily. The Vatican, quite intentionally, has always emphasized that he remains conscious and lucid. The essential idea is what he said three years ago, when he began using a wheelchair due to knee problems and was asked if he was considering resigning: “You govern with your head, not with your knee.” As long as he has a head, he will continue.

Furthermore, neither the Pope nor the Vatican are afraid to portray an elderly and declining pontiff. John Paul II suffered from severely deteriorating Parkinson’s disease during his final years. It reinforces the idea that the papacy is lifelong, that it is in God’s hands, and that the Pope must accept old age and the proximity of death. But obviously, this time there is a new factor: the resignation of Benedict XVI in 2013.

Why has there been talk of a possible resignation?

This month, as has happened several times in recent years, whenever the Pope has had health problems, there has been talk of whether he might resign. The precedent of Joseph Ratzinger makes this a perfectly pertinent question. That’s why journalists have asked every cardinal who has allowed themselves to be interviewed, and for the same reason the answer has always been that it’s possible, if Francis wishes to. But the truth is that the debate doesn’t exist in public; no cardinal, not even Francis’s staunchest enemies from the most conservative faction, has sought his resignation. Indeed, they are opposed to it, a factor that can seem paradoxical if one doesn’t fully understand the internal dynamics of the Church: for the traditionalists, Benedict XVI’s resignation was a dramatic and dangerous breach of age-old rules that must not be repeated.

Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, for example, one of the leading figures in this sector, stated in 2023 that he was “absolutely against it” and went so far as to say that Ratzinger’s decision was “not clearly considered, neither dogmatically nor canonically.” He has now repudiated all gossip about the conclave or potential successors and has reiterated: “The resignation of a Pope cannot be considered an option.” It is very striking that the Italian press has no predictions or lists of papal candidates, nor any calculations about the conclave, unlike what was happening in the final years of John Paul II’s papacy.

Could Francis resign?

Yes, of course. He himself has said so bluntly. In 2022, he stated that, after being elected in 2013, he wrote a letter of resignation and handed it to the Vatican secretary of state, then Tarcisio Bertone, to be used “in case of impediment for medical reasons.” In 2023, he explained again that he would have no problem resigning if he felt unable to continue, but he already clarified that it would be an extreme case, limited to the loss of mental faculties, because “it doesn’t have to become, let’s say, a fad, a normal thing; I believe that the Pope’s ministry is ad vitam.”

“The Pope is absolutely right about this; it’s a very wise position. We must consider the potential problems of cohabitation,” says Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of the Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, from 2007 to 2018. “In my opinion, he won’t resign. Unless the situation is disastrous, and at this moment the information we have doesn’t allow us to reach that conclusion.”

Why is resignation problematic?

It must not be forgotten that Benedict XVI’s resignation was a trauma for the Church, a situation that had not occurred since Gregory XII in 1415. It was caused by his inability to confront serious internal problems, from corruption to financial scandals and pedophilia within the Church. They were contained in that large box he handed to his successor the first time they met, an historical image. Francis was elected in the midst of a crisis. But he raised fears of a worse one; an unprecedented scenario was emerging that evoked other traumas of the past: the risks of two popes coexisting are a nightmare for the Church, reminiscent of times of popes, antipopes, and schisms. These sparked a thousand debates and dire omens after Ratzinger’s resignation, which faded when it became clear that Francis and Benedict XVI had handled things very well, until the latter’s death in 2022.

But the fear is that it won’t always be this way. It’s a fact that the conservative sector of the Church tried in recent years to involve Ratzinger in maneuvers against Bergoglio, to discredit him, something the German pontiff always elegantly dismissed, as Massimo Franco of Corriere della Sera recounted in his book The Bergoglio Enigma: “Bergoglio’s adversaries, often conservatives desperately searching for a word from Benedict XVI that sounded like a critique of Bergoglio, saw how he invariably responded: ‘The Pope is one, he is Francis.’ Ratzinger’s obsession with the unity of the Church was more acute than ever. The ghosts of a schism were very present, both in him and in his successor, and in many cardinals.”

“The Pope wants to move forward; he won’t resign unless something really, really serious happens to him,” agrees Elisabetta Piqué, Bergoglio’s biographer and friend and Rome correspondent for the Argentine newspaper La Nación. She points out that the pontiff may feel the weight of responsibility for not consolidating Benedict XVI’s resignation as a new trend, an event that he and the entire Church want to remain exceptional. “This would be problematic for his successor because it would reinforce that line, and he doesn’t want it to become a fad. For him, the Church is not a business where someone retires when they’re old, and he believes it’s in his hands to decide whether or not it becomes a trend.”

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