Why Did Pope Benedict Resign?

                           WHY THE POPE HAD TO RESIGN


Kevin Annett, leader of the International Tribunal Against Crimes of Church & State is pictured above.

The biggest crisis to hit Catholicism since the Reformation keeps spiraling out of control for the Vatican.

Domestic commentators describe events in Rome as constituting the worst political problem for an Italian government in decades, as President Napolitano is being pressured by the Vatican and his Lateran Treaty obligations to aid Pope Benedict evade and obstruct justice.

The entire matter of the Pope's situation and Italian liability for criminal behavior was apparently high on the agenda of Napolitano's recent discussions with US President Barack Obama in Washington, DC.

Meanwhile, keeping an accused Joseph Ratzinger under their protection in defiance of international law, the Vatican's Secretariat of State under Cardinal Bertone is delaying their response to a Diplomatic communique from a European government notifying Rome of impending legal action against Ratzinger.

According to a source who is a liaison with the said government, no official reply has been issued by Bertone's office to the February 4 communique, nor is the Secretariat even engaged in back-channel communications on the matter.

"They are pretending the Diplomatic Note never arrived, and that business is normal leading up to their Conclave to choose their next pope. They must maintain an appearance of stability right now, we are assuming" said the liaison source.

Meanwhile, the church-dominated Italian media has launched a vilifying and uninformed assault on the ITCCS and Kevin Annett without having contacted or interviewed Annett or ITCCS officers.

Nevertheless, ITCCS website traffic has exceeded 300,000 "hits" in the past several days, and legal and political help is pouring in to the Tribunal, especially from Italy and the United States.

The ITCCS is planning public occupations of Catholic churches commencing Sunday, March 24, 2013. It will issue an update and plan of action tomorrow, on this website.

Issued by ITCCS Central – Brussels
18 February, 2013