THE announcement of Pope Benedict XVI’s imminent resignation has come as a surprise to the rector of the redemptorists in Limerick Fr Adrian Egan.

THE announcement of Pope Benedict XVI’s imminent resignation has come as a surprise to the rector of the redemptorists in Limerick Fr Adrian Egan.

The Vatican has confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI will resign on February 28. He is the first pontiff to resign since 1415.

Speaking this morning, Fr Adrian Egan said he was shocked when he heard the news.

“I’m very very surprised and taken aback. I had no sense that this was coming or that it would be coming because it is very unprecidented so I’m like everybody else, I’m taken aback and I’m very surprised,” he told Live 95FM.

Fr Egan added that it is very rare for a Pope to resign.

“You have to go back hundreds and hundreds of years to the last one, I can’t even recall off the top of my head when the last pope resigned. I remember at the time of Pope John Paul II when he was very very ill and totally incapacitated, people wondered about him resiging but that never came to happen,” he said.