In an interview with Professor Stanislao Pugliese we review an illustrious precedent to Pope Ratzinger’s resignantion—that of Celestine V, who resigned in 1294. Scorned as a “coward” by Dante Alighieri who actually accused him to have paved the way to the appointment of the infamously corrupt Boniface VIII, Celestine was rehabilitated by the renowned Italian writer Ignazio Silone in a famous novel published in 1968. To offer our readers some food for thought and help put today’s events in the Vatican in a broader perspective, Silone’s biographer prof. Pugliese tells us the story of Celestine V as reinterpreted by a great Italian writer whose motto was “Conscience is above obedience.”
