Pope Celestine V - Papacy

Papacy

Shortly after assuming office, Celestine issued a papal bull granting a rare plenary indulgence to all pilgrims visiting Santa Maria di Collemaggio through its holy door on the anniversary of his papal coronation. The Perdonanza Celestiniana festival is celebrated in L'Aquila every 28–29 August in commemoration of this event.

His notable acts as pope include the unprecedented privilege of empowering Francis of Apt, a Franciscan friar, to confer the clerical tonsure and minor orders on Louis of Toulouse (who would later become Bishop of Toulouse), the son of the King of Sicily. However, it seems this decree was not carried out. He issued two other decrees: one confirmed an earlier decree of Pope Gregory X that ordered the shutting of the cardinals in a conclave to elect a new pope; the second declared the right of any pope to abdicate the papacy, a right that he himself exercised at the end of five months and eight days at Naples on 13 December 1294. In the formal instrument of renunciation he recited as the causes moving him to the step, "the desire for humility, for a purer life, for a stainless conscience, the deficiencies of his own physical strength, his ignorance, the perverseness of the people, his longing for the tranquility of his former life". Having divested himself of every outward symbol of papal dignity, he retired to his old solitude. Although it is often said that Celestine is the only pope to resign voluntarily, in fact, other popes have similarly abdicated of their own will. These are John XVIII in 1009 and Benedict IX in May 1045, although the latter regretted it and was soon back. There was also Gregory XII in 1415 who agreed to quit at the request of the Council of Constance.