He arrived – in his own words, in 2005 – as “a simple, humble worker in God’s vineyard”. And on a grey, cold, blustery Monday in February, Pope Benedict XVI signed off in the same fashion: like an elderly labourer who can no longer ignore the pains in his back; who can no more count on the strength of his arms. Characteristically for this most traditionally minded of pontiffs, he made his excuses in Latin. The first German pope in modern times timed his departure to the minute. “From 28 February 2013, at 20.00 hours”, he told a gathering of cardinals in the Vatican, “the see of Rome, the see of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a conclave to elect the new supreme pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.” Among those present was a Mexican prelate, Monsignor Oscar Sanchéz Barba, from Guadalajara. He was in Rome to be told the date for a canonization in which he has played a leading role. “We were all in the Sala del Concistoro in the third loggia of the Apostolic Palace,” he said. “After giving the date for the canonization, the twelfth of May, the Pope took a sheet of paper and read from it. “We were all left …” – Sanchéz Barba looked around him in the Bernini colonnade that embraces St Peter’s Square, grasping for the word, as speechless as the “princes of the church” who had just heard the man they believe to