Benedict XVI revealed the reason for his resignation in 2013 in a letter sent a few weeks before his death to his biographer.
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The Pope Emeritus sent a letter on October 28, a few weeks before his death, to his biographer, the German Peter Seewald.
In this letter, revealed by the weekly Focus, Joseph Ratzinger, who died aged 95 last December, explains that the “central reason” for his resignation in February 2013 was “the insomnia which had accompanied (him) uninterruptedly since the World Youth Days in Cologne” in August 2005, a few months following his election to succeed John Paul II.
AFP
His personal doctor had then prescribed him “powerful remedies” which initially enabled him to ensure his charge. But these sleeping pills would have over time, according to the letter of the Pope emeritus, reached their “limits” and would have “been less and less able to guarantee” its availability.
This taking of sleeping pills would also have been the cause of an incident during a trip to Mexico and Cuba in March 2012.
AFP
The morning following the first night, he reportedly found that his handkerchief was “totally soaked in blood,” according to the letter cited by Focus. “I must have bumped into something in the bathroom and fell,” writes the Pope emeritus.
A doctor was able to ensure that the injuries were not visible and a new personal practitioner is said to have insisted following this incident on prescribing a “reduction of sleeping pills” and advised the Pope to only appear in the morning on his trips to the foreigner.
The Pope emeritus says in his letter that he is well aware that these medical restrictions “might only be tenable for a short period” and this observation led him to resign in February 2013, a few months before the WYD in Rio which he felt was not not be able to “overcome”. He thus resigned early enough for his successor, Pope Francis, to honor this visit to Brazil.
AFP
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, whose resignation in 2013 took the whole world by surprise, died on December 31 in the monastery in the Vatican gardens where he had retired.
His pontificate was marked by multiple crises, like the Vatileaks scandal in 2012, which exposed a vast network of corruption in the Vatican, or cases of pedocrime involving clerics.