By now I daresay that we have reconciled ourselves, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, that Pope Benedict saw fit to relinquish his office as Pope; a role that is, for Catholics, determined by the Holy Spirit and, when speaking ex cathedra, blessed with infallibility.

Pope Benedict has successfully steered the Catholic ship through one of the worst periods of its history

Although I personally think that Pope Benedict was extremely courageous to take this step that very very few of his many predecessors took, many because they were schismatic anyway, I feel it calls to question both beliefs that were hitherto drummed into us; namely the intervention of the Holy Spirit and the infallibility.

As a Catholic I do believe implicitly in the first, while, because of the historical circumstances during which it was laid down, I have my serious reservations about the infallibility bit. Yes, I do believe that Joseph Ratzinger was inspired by the Holy Spirit to resign. Just how it was part of the divine plan for him to be an interim pope after the iconic reign of John Paul II, his role is now over and his task is done.

Benedict XVI has been unfairly judged by many of us who all expected the brakes applied by Pope Wojtila to be relaxed immediately after his death, forgetting that the tsunami of scandals that marred this Pope’s tenure was about to break. It was upon his aged frail shoulders that the ire of the world, Catholic or no, broke, and it was he who, like a sacrificial lamb, weathered the storm which almost destroyed the Church completely and which has left it seriously maimed but determined to restore and preserve what is left and start building again.

I wonder whether Ratzinger harbours a horror of the physical deterioration that his predecessor underwent in the years leading up to his death and the much bruited senility that the Polish Pope was afflicted with. I know that I would have been haunted by it.

However try as one might when one is in a position like that, it is very hard to relinquish that irresistibly attractive but fatally ephemeral thing called Power with a capital P simply because one is convinced that nobody can do the job as well as you do and that they will undo and destroy everything you have built up. You are probably right in 99 per cent of the cases but that is the way of the world.

This is why I think that the Pope’s retirement must have taken months and weeks of deliberation and must have been accompanied by many hours of painstaking historical research to check out the various precedents and their consequences. Yes the Pope’s move, shocking as it was, is a great lesson to us all. We are not indispensible.

Regimes come and go and governments professing different ideologies follow each other in an inexorable succession as impressive as that conjured up by the witches in Macbeth. Since Constantine and St Peter before him, the line of Popes has survived practically unbroken.

The Catholic Church survived the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, Catharism, the Crusades, the Ottomans the Reformation, Counter reformation, the French revolution, Napoleon and Hitler to name but a very few movements and personalities that have threatened its very existence. It has survived the most terrifying threat of all, a practically institutionalised scandal from within its own echelons. It was and still is beleaguered by relativism and a host of other –isms, however it seems as if the worst is over for the time being.

This is why Benedict XVI has decided to step aside for a younger and fresher minded prelate to take his place. This would have been the reformist cardinal who probably should have been elected in 2005 but couldn’t be as those reforms would have been meaningless and lost in translation while the paedophile scandals were still raging.

Because we are human there is no way that the problems and threats which assail us or the church will ever cease and there is nothing left to do except try to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear if you are an optimist or jumping off the nearest cliff if you’re a pessimist. Mercifully most of us are like corks...

I have not always agreed with this pope especially in as far as his convoluted similes regarding gay marriage are concerned however I am optimistic about the future that even here we will find a modus vivendi.

Malta needs to learn a couple of lessons from this Pope. On the premise that not even the pope is indispensible, neither are presidents, prime ministers, kings and dictators, hard as it may be to accept nor am I and nor are you.

Stray asteroids apart the world will keep on turning with or without us and change is bound to happen whether we like it or not. We must not be afraid of change just as we should not be afraid of the ultimate frontier; Death.

One simply has to admire the courage of this pope because in every respect he had the cards of life stacked against him. Never was a pontiff by and large so initially unwelcomed. Despite this he has successfully steered the Catholic ship through one of the worst periods of its history and for that he deserves my unreserved admiration.