But it seems likely that the move also came out of the realization that he no longer had complete control of the church. During the so-called "Vatileaks" affair last year, secret documents and letters were smuggled out of the Vatican over a period of months. They bore witness to intrigue and a shocking power struggle among top Catholic cardinals. Pope Benedict XVI has been unable to put a stop to it. Nor was he able to reform the Vatican Bank following a series of obscure deals apparently aimed at money laundering.

The pope has "suffered greatly under certain elements that come with the office," Max Seckler, a long-time friend of Ratzinger's, told the German news agency DPA. "It is difficult to imagine the degree of intrigue that is present in Rome." Seckler, 85, said that he has wondered for years how much longer his friend could stand the strain.

But Benedict, who holds a PhD in theology, has also had difficulties addressing other issues facing the church. He has proven unable to adequately deal with the seemingly unending series of sex abuse scandals that has shaken Catholic institutions around Europe and the world in recent years. Furthermore, his hard-line stance on faith has done little to slow down the widening cleft between today's believers and the Vatican. Huge numbers have left the church in recent years, particularly in well-off dioceses in Europe and the United States as Rome has become increasingly inflexible in its orthodoxy under Ratzinger's leadership.

Lombardi seemed to hint at just how difficult that search might be in his noon comments, mentioning the "great problems the church faces today." Lombardi added that the pope did not expect that a schism would result from his decision to step down - hardly the kind of statement that will resolve doubts about the crisis now facing a deeply fractious church leadership.

It’s focused on enrichment because if they can continue and complete the enrichment of high enriched uranium, then they’ll have enough to produce enough material to produce a nuclear bomb.

“I drew a line at the UN, last time I was there,” he added. “They haven’t crossed that line, but what they’re doing is to shorten the time that it will take them to cross that line. And the way they’re shortening that time is by putting in new, faster centrifuges that cut the time by one third, so that Iran is putting itself in a position to cross the red line and have enough material to produce one nuclear bomb’s worth of highly enriched uranium. This has to be stopped, for the interest of peace and security, for the interest of the entire world.”

“The second challenge we face is in Syria. Syria is not one of the great economies of the world. It’s not a developed country. And it certainly suffered tremendous tragedies in the last two years with great human cost. But this undeveloped country has the world’s most developed weapons there. It has stockpiles of chemical weapons, and it has other strategic weapons – weapons that can change the balance of power in the Middle East. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: we will not sit idly by and let those weapons fall into the hands of terrorists.”

“And we have a third challenge, which is to advance a solid secure peace with the Palestinians,” he said. “I believe that the framework for this peace is what I outlined in my speech in Bar Ilan University: two states for two peoples – a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state. I think to reach this solution we have to negotiate in good faith. Negotiating in good faith means you don’t place preconditions.”

The news came as the supermarket chain Tesco admitted it had been selling frozen spaghetti Bolognese readymeals which were between 60 per cent and 100 cent horsemeat. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Miss Brown said retailers were currently focusing on ‘comminuted’ beef – “the stuff where meat is ground up to the point that it is not readily recognisable”.

But once the horsemeat scandal was over, other meats like pork and chicken would have to be tested too for cross-contamination. She said: “It is not lost on retailers that they need to test significantly across this product range, across wider meat-based product ranges.” The findings had to be made public to consumers.

There have been reports of chicken being secretly injected with waste from the beef and pork production process to inflate chicken breasts to fetch a higher price. The findings are particularly sensitive because Muslims, Jews and Hindus are forbidden from eating either pork or beef.

Last night it emerged that the two abattoirs that supplied the horse meat that had been identified by the Romanian government. They said that they had supplied the horse meat that ended up on British supermarket shelves but that it had been correctly labelled when it left their country. Romania exports around £8 million worth of horse meat a year. It costs on average 50 per cent less than beef and can be as much as six times cheaper.

The meat appears to have arrived in the UK via a factory in Luxembourg belonging to French food supplier Comigel. It reached there from Spanghero, a food plant in France, which in turn received horsemeat from Romania. Comigel's president claims the company was unaware that Spanghero's meat was coming from abroad.

Many, including Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, suspect criminal gangs are to blame. "What a mess the processed meat trade seems to have got into," says Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London's City University. "The much-vaunted control of big companies over their supply chains is looking tattered."

There has always been food fraud. Once upon a time it might have been watered down beer or bread adulterated with sawdust. Today, rising food prices, long supply chains and high mark ups on some foods have made fraud easier and more profitable.

Operation Opson in 2011 targeted ports, airports and retail outlets in 10 European countries, including the UK. Among the products seized were 13,000 bottles of substandard olive oil, 30 tonnes of fake tomato sauce, about 77,000 kg of counterfeit cheese, 12,000 bottles of substandard wine, five tonnes of substandard fish and seafood; and nearly 30,000 counterfeit confectionery bars.

The 85-year-old German-born Pope, hailed as a hero by conservative Catholics and viewed with suspicion by liberals, said he had noticed that his strength had deteriorated over recent months.

A Vatican spokesman said the Pope had not resigned because of "difficulties in the papacy" and the decision had been a surprise, indicating that even his closest aides were unaware that he was about to quit. The Pope does not fear schism in the Church after his resignation, the spokesman said.

Before he was elected Pope, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was known by such critical epithets as "God's rottweiler" because of his stern stand on theological issues. But after several years into his new job he showed that he not only did not bite but barely even barked.

In recent months, the Pope has looked increasingly frail in public sometimes being helped to walk by those around him. A Vatican spokesman said the pontiff would step down from 2 pm ET on February 28, leaving the office vacant until a successor was chosen to Benedict who succeeded John Paul, one of history's most popular pontiffs.

Not long ago Greeks were enjoying high paid salaries, early retirements, excess cash, and seemingly never ending economic growth. Today, just a short time after a financial collapse that rocked global financial markets, Europe’s darling has turned into a frightening example of what happens when governments and their people take on more debt than they can ever hope to repay.

The end result is a warning to the rest of us.

Hundreds of people jostled for free vegetables handed out by farmers in a symbolic protest earlier on Wednesday, trampling one man and prompting an outcry over the growing desperation created by economic crisis. Images of people struggling to seize bags of tomatoes and leeks thrown from a truck dominated television, triggering a bout of soul-searching over the new depths of poverty in the debt-laden country. “These images make me angry. Angry for a proud people who have no food to eat, who can’t afford to keep warm, who can’t make ends meet,” said Kostas Barkas, a lawmaker from the leftist Syriza party.