A little more than two months before he died, the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote a letter to his biographer Peter Seewald giving the real reason for his resignation.
The letter is dated 28 October 2022 and is addressed to Seewald. “The primary motive for my resignation was the insomnia which had accompanied me ever since the World Youth Day in Cologne [August 2005]”, Benedict wrote.
The strong sleeping pills his doctor had prescribed had at first worked and guaranteed that that he could continue to function as Pope, but they had soon reached their limits and he felt that he was less and less capable of carrying out his office, Benedict wrote.
On his visit to Mexico and Cuba in March 2012, he had woken up one morning to find his handkerchief soaked with blood. “I must have fallen and hurt my head in the bathroom”, the letter said.
A surgeon had – “thanks be to God” – been able to patch him up so that the injury had not been visible, he wrote.
After this accident his new doctor had reduced his sleeping pills and insisted that he only appear publicly in the mornings on his trips abroad in future, but it had become increasingly clear to him that the restrictions the doctor had ordered would “only be possible for a short while”.
The next long trip abroad was planned for World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in July 2013. He knew that he would not be able to keep this appointment and so he had planned his resignation in time for a “new Pope” to undertake the trip.
In his letter to Seewald, Benedict expressly states that he would arrive at the same decision today after giving the issue deep thought for years. It had simply not been possible for him to execute the office of Pope any longer.
Benedict had not wanted to cause a stir by revealing during his lifetime that his resignation had been caused by insomnia, Seewald told KNA on 27 January. Unfortunately other reasons for his resignation were still circulating, he said.
“Rumours about blackmail and all manner of pressure he was supposedly exposed to refuse to be quashed and there are those who still insist that ‘Vatileaks’ was the main reason.”
That was why he felt obliged “to publish the decisive details of the German Pope’s medical history,” Seewald said.
“I hope that this will put an end to the conspiracy theories and other speculations for good.”
Benedict resigned for reasons of health “just as he said in his resignation declaration”, Seewald said.
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