<\/p>\n
The spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI, surprised the world Monday, 11th of February, by saying he will resign at the end of the month “because of advanced age.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n [toggle Title=”For Details, Click To Open \/ Close”]<\/p>\n This is the first time a pope has stepped down in nearly 600 years.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n “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,” said Benedict, 85, according to the Vatican.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n He announced his resignation in Latin during a meeting of Vatican cardinals on Monday morning, 11th of February,\u00a0emphasizing\u00a0that leading more than a billion Roman Catholics worldwide requires ‘both strength of mind and body.’<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A cardinal who was at the meeting said: \u2018We listened with a sense of incredulity as His Holiness told us of his decision to step down from the church that he so loves.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n His resignation will create a vacuum in the spiritual pinnacle of the Catholic church world-wide, which must be replaced. Speculations are rife, that Nigeria’s Cardinal Arinze is high on the list of likely successors.<\/p>\n [\/toggle]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI, surprised the world Monday, 11th of February, by saying he will resign at the end of the month “because of advanced age.” [toggle Title=”For Details, Click To Open \/ Close”] This is the first time a pope has stepped down in nearly 600 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}