After eight years, the Pope said his final farewell to the Vatican last night with a flight into the sunset.
The 85-year-old’s Italian air force helicopter circled Rome, passing over the Colosseum to give the Pontiff one last view of the city.
Bells rang out from St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and churches all over Rome as he flew overhead.
Before leaving, Benedict XVI said goodbye to the monsignors, nuns, Vatican staff and Swiss Guards who make up the papal household.
He also sent a final tweet, saying: ‘Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives.’
Members of the Swiss Guard close the doors to Pope Benedict XVI’s residence in Castel Gandolfo to mark the end of his service
Accompanied by his faithful personal secretary Georg Ganswein, a former ski instructor known as Gorgeous George, he made the short journey to the papal summer palace 15 miles south-east of Rome.
On the balcony of the Castel Gandolfo, where he will spend the next two months, he made his final appearance as Pope.
A visibly moved Benedict said: ‘Thank you for your affection and your friendship. I am now just a simple pilgrim.’
Benedict’s shock abdication – the first in almost 600 years – has left the Catholic Church in turmoil.
And his final day in office was marred by criticism from a senior cardinal who said the retirement sets a worrying precedent.
Cardinal George Pell told Australia’s Seven Network TV station: ‘People who, for example, might disagree with a future pope will mount a campaign to get him to resign.’
Benedict has, however, promised his ‘unconditional reverence and obedience’ to the new pope.
Meanwhile the senior Vatican cardinal with interim powers until the election of a new pope has been accused of spying.
Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone tapped Vatican phones and monitored emails over the past year, according to the Italian investigative magazine Panorama.
Benedict said he was ‘simply a pilgrim about to start his last journey on Earth’ and gave ‘a heartfelt thank you’ before disappearing inside the Apostolic Palace in the town.
‘Dear friends, I’m happy to be with you, surrounded by the beauty of creation and your well-wishes, which do me such good.
‘Thank you for your friendship, and your affection. You know this day is different for me than the preceding ones: I am no longer the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, or I will be until 8 o’clock this evening and then no more.
‘I am simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on this Earth.
‘But I would still … thank you … I would still with my heart, with my love, with my prayers, with my reflection, and with all my inner strength, like to work for the common good and the good of the church and of humanity. I feel very supported by your sympathy.
‘Let us go forward with the Lord for the good of the church and the world. Thank you, I now wholeheartedly impart my blessing. Blessed be God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Good night! Thank you all!’
The pope, walking with the aid of a cane, left his private apartments at the Vatican shortly before 4pm GMT, which will be sealed when his resignation takes effect tonight, and was greeted by the vicar of Rome and the vicar of the Vatican City.
The helicopter with Pope Benedict XVI aboard flies past St Peter’s Square today as he left the Vatican
The small figure of Benedict XVI could be seen waving to crowds gathered on rooftops around Rome as his helicopter took off
He emerged from the Apostolic Palace there into the San Damaso courtyard to rounds of applause from the Church’s top brass as well as his staff, who had joined nuns, members of the clergy and Swiss Guards to say goodbye.
As the convoy drove away from the palace, the pope’s Twitter account sent its final tweet.
It said: ‘Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives.’
A banner read: ‘Thank you’ and then, in German, ‘God Bless You.’
Bells rang out from St Peter’s Basilica and churches all over the city he passed overhead.
Before boarding the helicopter, Benedict said goodbye to the monsignors, nuns, Vatican staff and Swiss guards who make up the papal household. Many had tears in their eyes.
Earlier, aides were seen draping a crimson banner emblazoned with his seal over the palace’s balcony ahead of his arrival.
Onlookers gathered on rooftops and around large television screens in St Peter’s Square as the bells of St Peter’s Basilica peeled to mark his departure – usually reserved for the death of the pontiff.
‘Thank you and good night’ was Pope Benedict’s last message to cheering crowds as he becomes first pope to retire in 600 years
Pope waves final farewell to crowds as he enters retirement
Earlier, Benedict began the final day of his pontificate by greeting his cardinals for the last time.
The outgoing pontiff pledged his ‘unconditional obedience’ to his successor and urged cardinals to work together ‘like an orchestra’ so ‘agreement and harmony’ can be reached despite deep internal divisions.
Addressing the cardinals in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall at the Apostolic Palace, Benedict said: ‘I will continue to be close to you in prayer, especially in the next few days…as you elect the new pope to whom I today declare my unconditional reverence and obedience.
‘In these past eight years we have lived with faith beautiful moments of radiant light in the path of the Church as well as moments when some clouds darkened the sky.
‘We tried to serve Christ and his Church.’
Benedict told the cardinals: ‘Among you there is also the future pope to whom I promise my unconditional obedience and reverence.
‘The Church is a living being,’ he added, but it ‘also remains always the same’.
He is due to spend two months at the retreat, where his predecessor John Paul II installed a swimming pool, while workers renovate permanent lodgings in a convent inside the Vatican.
Today, residents in the town hung inflatable balloons out of a window in preparation for his arrival, spelling out the Italian for: ‘Thank you Benedict, we are all with you’.
Benedict emerged from his private apartments to a crowd of senior clergy and staff before being driven away to the helipad
Despite his resignation, Benedict will continue to wear the white cassock of the papacy but must give up the distinctive red leather Prada shoes for a pair of brown loafers.
His decision to live at the Vatican in retirement, be called ‘Your Holiness’ and to wear the white cassock has deepened concerns about the shadow he will cast over the next papacy.
But the former Cardinal Ratzinger has said that he plans to live out a life of prayer and meditation while ‘hidden to the world’.
Some Church scholars worry that if the next pope undoes some of Benedict’s policies while his predecessor is still alive, Benedict could act as a lightning rod for conservatives and polarise the Church.
With the election of the next pope taking place in the wake of sexual abuse scandals, leaks of his private papers by his butler, falling membership and demands for a greater role for women, many in the Church believe it would benefit from a fresh face from a non-European country.
During the farewell gathering, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the dean of the cardinals, thanked Benedict for his service.
After the speech, cardinals bowed to kiss his fisherman’s ring for the last time before the ring and the papal seal are destroyed tonight.
Some seemed to choke up at that moment while other cardinals chatted while waiting for their turn.
Benedict, soon to be known as pope emeritus, will be left in the care of his butler, two secretaries and four memores, the laywomen who care for him.
A number of cardinals from the developing world, including Ghanaian Peter Turkson and Antonio Tagle of the Philippines are two names often mentioned as leading candidates from the developing world who listen more.
‘At the past two conclaves, the cardinals elected the smartest man in the room,’ said Father Tom Resse, a historian and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.
‘Now, it may be time to choose a man who will listen to all the other smart people in the Church.’
Yesterday, in his final public address at St Peter’s Square, Benedict told a 200,000-strong crowd that in recent years God had seemed to him ‘to be sleeping’.
His papacy of almost eight years has been marred by child-abuse scandals and, more recently, the leaking of private documents by his personal butler.
He leaves his successor a top secret report on rivalries and scandals within the Curia, the Vatican departments which govern the global Church, 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.
Benedict told yesterday’s crowd that he understood the seriousness and ‘novelty’ of his decision to become the first pope to resign in 600 years but said he had done it for the ‘good of the Church’.
He said: ‘I took this step in full awareness of its gravity and rarity but also with profound serenity of spirit.’
He said he was not ‘coming down from the cross’ despite renouncing his office but would remain in the service of the church through prayer. He asked the crowd to pray for the cardinals and his successor.
The 266th pope will be elected by the College of Cardinals, which is expected to meet soon to set a date for the next conclave to begin.
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 all, 115 cardinals under the age of 80 are expected in Rome for the conclave to vote on who should become the next pope.
Benedict gave the cardinals the go-ahead to move up the start date of the conclave on Monday, abolishing the traditional 15-day waiting period.
Britain’s Roman Catholics will not be represented at this conclave after the resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien this week, amid accusations of inappropriate behaviour.
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