Paul Vallely: Reports of the Pope's resignation are premature

Asked in private why he did not resign, he replied 'because Jesus did not come down from the Cross'

At the end of this week Pope John Paul II will embark on his ninth visit to his native Poland. Once again there is speculation that it will be his last visit. He is going home to die, or to retire to a monastery to spend the rest of his days in quiet contemplation in the mountains, it is being whispered.

Certainly the Pope is an increasingly frail figure. He has Parkinson's disease, severe arthritis in the right knee, the after-effects of a mismanaged hip- replacement, and difficulties in hearing and speaking. He is 82. And certainly there is provision under section 332.2 of Rome's Code of Canon Law for a pope to resign. He knows that. He put it there himself.

When John Paul II was recuperating from the assassination attempt on him in 1981 he spent his time revising the Church's legal code. The Secretary of the Supreme Tribunal of the Church, Archbishop Grocholewski, came regularly to spend time by his sick bed taking dictation from the Pontiff on the revised wording. By the end they had produced a book of 1,752 rules. When they came to the law governing the resignation of bishops at the age of 75 the Pontiff broke off and asked Grocholewski, "and what about the Pope?" When the archbishop answered, "There is no law obliging the Pope to resign", John Paul II replied: "Write this: 'If it happens that the Roman Pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it be accepted by anyone'." He had laid the ground rules for a unilateral Papal resignation.

In recent times there has been much talk inside Catholic circles that the time has come when the Pope will take advantage of his own change in the law. Figures as prominent as Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Bishops' Conference, and Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, among others, have made public comments suggesting the Pope might resign.

John Paul II has appeared to contradict this. On the eve of his 75th birthday the Pope told a general audience that he would leave it to Christ "to decide when and how he wants to relieve me of this service". More recently Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez, the Chilean who heads the Congregation for Divine Worship, told reporters that he once heard the Pope asked in private why he does not resign; his response was "because Jesus did not come down from the Cross".

And then last month Vittorio Messori, the journalist who collaborated with the Pope on his best-selling book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, ran a front-page story in the Corriere della Sera quoting "recent and certain" intelligence that the Pontiff had no intention of standing down, paraphrasing the Pope's thinking as: "Christ in his mysterious design, has brought me here. And it will be he who decides my fate."

And yet Rome is a furtive and foxy place where people constantly interpret between-the-lines messages. That is hardly surprising when the Vatican's official spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls is capable of making statements such as: "Everything that has been confirmed, is confirmed. But something that is confirmed can be unconfirmed." Navarro-Valls is a member of Opus Dei, the powerful and secretive movement born in Franco's Spain; one extremely high-ranking and otherwise conservative cardinal has privately confided to a friend that the Pope has become "the prisoner of Opus Dei". The Vatican press corps, which was the prototype for the Kremlinologists who became so adept at interpreting the smallest signal from Moscow during the height of the Cold War, are finely attuned to the smallest vibrations. Sometimes hyper-sensitivity becomes over-sensitivity, as on the Pope's trip to Bulgaria a few weeks back. There the journalists who follow the papal entourage in increasing numbers, desperate to be on the spot if he dies in some far-off place, filed frenzied reports when the Pope, speaking in Polish and being translated into Bulgarian, told the country's youth in Plovdiv cathedral: "It is a pleasure to be with you at the end of my pontificate." Trouble was the translator goofed; what the Pope had said was "at the end of my trip to Bulgaria".

These dedicated souls carry binoculars with them so as to be able to scrutinise the Pope in close-up detail. At the beginning of this month, therefore, they were able to report that on his trip to Mexico and Guatemala John Paul was smiling broadly and tapping out the rhythm of the music of the native dancers brought before him as he lay slumped in his papal chair.

Since the Pope's ailments are all degenerative, and long-term therefore, the verdict was that – barring an infection or a sudden fall – he could carry on for some considerable time. Insiders suggest that John Paul II is considerably more robust mentally and psychologically than might seem the case to those who observe him from afar or only on television.

So how do we reconcile the apparent contradiction that John Paul II has deliberately made legal provision for retirement but now refuses to act on it? My view is that the Pope sees canon law 332.2 as an escape clause in the event of his becoming mentally incapacitated. If American presidents ruled for life, as popes do, we could easily have Ronald Reagan with Alzheimer's in the White House.

What is most likely is that John Paul II has written a letter of resignation, as Pope Paul VI did before him, and deposited it with someone like Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the vicar of the diocese of Rome, or the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano. A covering note would make clear that the resignation letter were to be published only if he became irrevocably mentally incapacitated.

All of this potentially creates an ecclesiastical Pandora's box. Who would have the legal authority to decide when that stage had been reached? Might some clique of reactionaries take advantage of the letter to exercise the highest canonical power of the Church by arguing that a Pope in a coma or deprived of the power of speech might only be temporarily incapacitated?

Perhaps it will be the final controversial achievement of a long, controversial pontificate to insist that our contemporary horror of debilitating illness and the final devastations of death are not something to be concealed and avoided. They are to be confronted and even embraced. Our utilitarian ethic would have little truck with the notion, as would all the contemporary fear about "being left a vegetable". Yet there is dignity in disability, he seems to say, when it is borne with this kind of courage.

But it does explain why John Paul II, who has a messianic sense of his own vocation, is unlikely to step down just because he feels old and unwell. Illness to this pope is not just a cross to be borne. It is theologically apposite because it contradicts secular notions about "quality of life" and when persons cease to be worthy of total respect. It is part of his rationale against abortion, embryo research and euthanasia. People are valued for being not doing.

p.vallely@independent.co.uk