A Pathetic Pope

Today the Church commemorates the only pope to have abdicated, Pope Celestine V.

Born into a peasant family, at the age of twenty he became a hermit but left his cell to become a priest and entered the Benedictines. Five years later he returned to being a hermit and formed what would become the order of Celestines. After two years of indecision in electing a successor to Pope Nicholas IV, the eighty four year old Peter of Murrone was elected and despite grave misgivings, he submitted to being consecrated Bishop of Rome.

Unfortunately Celestine V become the innocent victim of schemings by the king of Naples and his own curial officials. Overcome by both a sense of failure in his duties and the burden of office, he chose to abdicate after only five months. But just when he thought he could return to being a hermit, his successor Pope Boniface VIII had him imprisoned out of fear that his popularity might lead plotters to have him reinstated and cause unrest in the Church. He died at the castle of Fumone where he famously said, "I wanted nothing in the world but a cell, and a cell they have given me."

PS When Pope Celestine first contemplated abdication, he consulted with the leading jurist of the time, Benedetto Cardinal Gaetano, who at first attempted to dissuade him but realising the pope was determined, made him issue a constitution declaring the legality of papal resignation. In an irony of sorts, when the conclave met to elect Celestine's successor the lot fell to none other than Cardinal Gaetano and with his election the Church would enter one of its stormiest periods.

PPS The life of St Celestine seems to parallel that of St Gregory Nazianzen.