Vatican City ? The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI hit his head during his March 2012 trip to Mexico but denies it had any "relevant" role in his resignation.
Italy's La Stampa newspaper reported Thursday that Benedict hit his head and bled when he got up in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar bedroom in Leon, Mexico. The report said blood stained his hair and sheets.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi confirmed the incident Thursday but said "it was not relevant for the trip, in that it didn't affect it, nor in the decision" to resign.
The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano reported earlier in the week that Benedict had taken the decision to resign after the Mexico-Cuba trip, which was physically exhausting for the 85-year-old pope.
Meanwhile, Benedict continued his farewell tour Thursday with an off-the-cuff meeting with Roman priests, an annual encounter that took on poignant new meaning with his impending resignation.
Walking with a cane, Benedict received another standing ovation from thousands of clerics gathered in the Vatican's main audience hall.
The Vatican has said Benedict would reflect on his personal experiences as a young theological expert attending the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meetings that brought the Catholic Church into the modern world.
Benedict spent much of his 8-year pontificate seeking to correct what he considers the misinterpretation of Vatican II, insisting that it wasn't a revolutionary break from the past, as liberal Catholics paint it, but a renewal and reawakening of the best traditions of the ancient church.
During an emotional final public Mass on Wednesday, Benedict lamented the internal church rivalries that have "defiled the face of the church" ? a not-too-subtle message to his successor and the cardinals who will elect him.
Those rivalries came to the fore last year with the leaks of internal papal documents by the pope's own butler. The documentation revealed bitter infighting within the highest ranks of the Catholic Church, allegations of corruption and mismanagement of the Holy See's affairs.
Benedict took the scandal as a personal betrayal and a wound on the entire church. In a sign of his desire to get to the bottom of the leaks, he appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate alongside Vatican investigators. His butler, Paolo Gabriele, was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison, although Benedict ultimately pardoned him.
Source: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130214/LIFESTYLE04/302140395/1041/rss11
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