By disclosing how close he came to abdication, he will reopen the debate about whether a future pope should resign at a certain age, or should illness overtake him.

This is one more dramatic intervention, albeit probably the last, from a pope who showed from the start of his priestly ministry that he was a master of the arts of communication. But it actually makes the prospect that future popes will abdicate less, not more, likely.

Popes can abdicate, but few do. The last to resign was Gregory XII, who quit in 1415 to end an era of schism. Celestine V abdicated a few months after his election in 1294, was arrested by his successor, and died in prison.

The vacuum of leadership at the top of the Catholic Church in the last two years of this Pope’s life led increasing numbers of senior prelates to a strong but privately held belief that this should not happen again, and that future popes should resign at 80 or before if they became incapacitated.

As Pope John Paul II’s health deteriorated, the Church was in effect run by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Inquisition, and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State. Such was the power accrued by Cardinal Ratzinger during this period that he acquired the nickname “Pope John Paul III”.

Some of the later documents emanating from the Vatican, such as that on homosexuals, were suspiciously harsh and dogmatic, filled with condemnations shorn of the compassion and understanding forged in the Pope’s own years toiling to bring down unforgiving regimes in Poland.

Cardinals, anxious to avoid a repeat performance of all this, have been talking between themselves about electing a successor who would commit himself to going at 80 — as they are obliged to do.

Yet now, after the death of the Pope, that outcome seems unlikely. No one who has witnessed this week’s scenes of mourning and remembrance will ever forget them.

It is going too far to speak of the death of Protestant England, but it certainly represents the death of that dreadful but deep-rooted prejudice which for so long infected the British psyche — the prejudice against anyone or anything with an allegiance to the Church of Rome.

In the manner of his dying Pope John Paul II has laid the last remnants of that prejudice to rest.

The impact of his death and funeral has been extraordinary. Their impact would hardly have been the same had he died after living out his final months in some little cell in a monastery in the hills around Rome. He would have gone with a whimper, not the enormous thunderclap that has shaken the world to its spiritual foundations.

For a pope who became a great communicator, his death has been the best PR that the Church he leaves behind could have wished. The benefit to the Church will be huge — and the lessons of this will not be lost on the cardinals.

Failing the second coming of Christ, it seems that the death of a serving pope has become the next best thing when it comes to keeping the Christian gospel alive.

Expect a resounding silence now in discussions on the resignations of future popes.

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