(Reuters) - Pope Benedict slips quietly from the world stage on Thursday after a private last goodbye to his cardinals and a short flight to a country palace to enter the final phase of his life "hidden from the world".
In keeping with his shy
and modest ways, there will be no public ceremony to mark the first papal
resignation in six centuries and no solemn declaration ending his nearly
eight-year reign at the head of the world's largest church.
His last public
appearance will be a short greeting to residents and well-wishers at Castel
Gandolfo, the papal summer residence south of Rome, in the late afternoon after
his 15-minute helicopter hop from the Vatican.
When the resignation
becomes official at 8 p.m. Rome time (02.00 p.m. EST), Benedict will be
relaxing inside the 17th century palace. Swiss Guards on duty at the main gate
to indicate the pope's presence within will simply quit their posts and return
to Rome to await their next pontiff.
Avoiding any special
ceremony, Benedict used his weekly general audience on Wednesday to bid an
emotional farewell to more than 150,000 people who packed St Peter's Square to
cheer for him and wave signs of support.
With a slight smile, his
often stern-looking face seemed content and relaxed as he acknowledged the loud
applause from the crowd.
"Thank you, I am
very moved," he said in Italian. His unusually personal remarks included
an admission that "there were moments ... when the seas were rough and the
wind blew against us and it seemed that the Lord was sleeping".
CARDINALS PREPARE THE
FUTURE
Once the chair of St
Peter is vacant, cardinals who have assembled from around the world for
Benedict's farewell will begin planning the closed-door conclave that will
elect his successor.
One of the first
questions facing these "princes of the Church" is when the 115
cardinal electors should enter the Sistine Chapel for the voting. They will
hold a first meeting on Friday but a decision may not come until next week.
The Vatican seems to be
aiming for an election by mid-March so the new pope can be installed in office
before Palm Sunday on March 24 and lead the Holy Week services that culminate
in Easter on the following Sunday.
In the meantime, the
cardinals will hold daily consultations at the Vatican at which they discuss
issues facing the Church, get to know each other better and size up potential
candidates for the 2,000-year-old post of pope.
There are no official candidates,
no open campaigning and no clear front runner for the job. Cardinals tipped as
favorites by Vatican watchers include Brazil's Odilo Scherer, Canadian Marc
Ouellet, Ghanaian Peter Turkson, Italy's Angelo Scola and Timothy Dolan of the
United States.
BENEDICT'S PLANS
Benedict, a bookish man
who did not seek the papacy and did not enjoy the global glare it brought,
proved to be an energetic teacher of Catholic doctrine but a poor manager of
the Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy that became mired in scandal during his
reign.
He leaves his successor
a top secret report on rivalries and scandals within the Curia, prompted by
leaks of internal files last year that documented the problems hidden behind
the Vatican's thick walls and the Church's traditional secrecy.
After about two months
at Castel Gandolfo, Benedict plans to move into a refurbished convent in the
Vatican Gardens, where he will live out his life in prayer and study,
"hidden to the world", as he put it.
Having both a retired
and a serving pope at the same time proved such a novelty that the Vatican took
nearly two weeks to decide his title and form of clerical dress.
He will be known as the
"pope emeritus," wear a simple white cassock rather than his white
papal clothes and retire his famous red "shoes of the fisherman," a
symbol of the blood of the early Christian martyrs, for more pedestrian brown
ones.
(Reporting By Tom
Heneghan; editing by Philip Pullella and Giles Elgood)