Pope Benedict XVI Revealed the Reason for his Resignation in a Letter Written Before his Death to Peter Seewald
Nine weeks before his death, the Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote a last letter to his official biographer Peter Seewald. In it he named his insomnia as the main reason for his health exhaustion and thus for his resignation.
The news magazine "Focus" reported this last letter; as Peter Seewald has just released a book called "Benedict's Legacy", which is about to be published by the Hamburg publishing house Hoffmann und Campe. In Benedict's letter, which "Focus" (with the exception of a small, blackened paragraph) published in its entirety as a photo document and which Seewald confirmed as authentic, the Pope Emeritus wrote a few weeks before his death that since World Youth Day in Cologne (2005) "the insomnia" "continuously accompanied" him.
After the death of Benedict XVI Seewald felt obliged to publish the crucial detail entrusted to me from the medical history of the German Pope. By this publication he hopes that the conspiracy theories and speculations will finally end. Benedict's resignation was for health reasons, just as he expressed it in his resignation statement. Incidentally, he had already unequivocally announced in 2010 in our interview book “Light of the World” that he would make use of the option to resign as soon as his strength no longer permitted him to exercise the office of Peter.
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