Moment

It's worth a brief note to mark an event that does not happen very often: the resignation of a pope. A difficult decision to make: to step down from leading a billion souls, when none of his predecessors has resigned for the last six centuries. Yet, in a way, understandable: you might imagine the pressure must be overwhelming at times, the climate of criticism too relentless for an aged man to tolerate, the disappointment of seeing so tarnished a world too painful to bear. You wonder what the outcome will be: whether this represents an uneasy period of transition, or whether something significant, something radical perhaps, will happen: either to retreat to past certainties or move tentatively towards an unknowable future.