Author Pope Benedict XVI will resign on February 28th, making the historic decision to step down ”due to an advanced age.”

The pope has been an author since 1966, most recently landing a book deal for Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives with Crown’s Image Books imprint. The book completed his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy. Wikipedia has Pope Benedict XVI’s long bibliography.

The New York Times has more about the resignation: “Citing advanced years and infirmity, Pope Benedict XVI stunned the Roman Catholic world on Monday by saying that he would resign on Feb. 28 after less than eight years in office, the first pope to do so in six centuries.”  (Image via)

Pope Benedict XVI has inked a book deal with Crown Publishing Group’s Image Books imprint, publishing “a penetrating and theologically rich exploration of the infancy and early life of Jesus.”

The book will complete Joseph Ratzinger‘s Jesus of Nazareth trilogy, arriving in the United States on December 4, 2012–just in time for Christmas. Image Books senior editor Gary Jansen negotiated the deal with Italian publisher Rizzoli. The Random House imprint will also publish a Spanish edition of the book in time for Easter 2013.

Here’s more from the release: “The first book in the series, a New York Times bestseller published in 2007, covered the period from Jesus’ baptism to his Transfiguration; the second, also a New York Times bestseller and issued in 2011, chronicled the passion and death of Jesus. Now, Pope Benedict focuses exclusively on the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ infancy and childhood, sharing a compelling, flesh-and-blood portrait of Jesus and inciting readers to encounter, face-to-face, the central figure and the hope of the Christian faith.” (Image via)

It was bound to happen, and I suppose the only thing I’m wondering is that it took this long for some would-be hacker to try to get into Bloomsbury‘s computer systems and retrieve the manuscript of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS – if you believe, of course, that such a thing took place and the hacker wasn’t trying to draw attention to himself and make shit up. I’m leaning towards that direction solely because I first heard of the story via press release and then when I followed the link to the posting in question (because I’m a spoiler kinda girl, what can I say) my skepticism increased after reading the hacker’s alleged explanation: “we did it by following the precious words of the great Pope Benedict XVI when he still was Cardinal Josepth [sic] Ratzinger. He explained why Harry Potter bring the youngs [sic]of our earth to Neo Paganism faith.” Perhaps more accurate, if there’s any accuracy to be had, is the follow-up reason: “we make this spoiler to make reading of the upcoming book useless and boring.”

But now that Reuters has gone and picked up the story, voila! Legitimacy, or at least the fanning flames of speculation. There’s the obligatory “no comment” from Bloomsbury while Kyle Good, a spokesman for Scholastic, would not say whether the posting was accurate, but did warn readers to be sceptical about anything on the Web that claims to have inside information on the book’s plot. “There is a whole lot of junk flying around,” she said. “Consider this one more theory.”