The helicopter with Pope Benedict XVI aboard flies past St Peter´s square at the Vatican en route to the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo outside Rome.

VATICAN CITY —Pope Benedict XVI left the Vatican by helicopter on Thursday afternoon, arriving at the papal summer residence in the final hours of his nearly eight-year, scandal-dogged papacy. Onlookers in St. Peter’s Square cheered, and Romans stood on rooftops to wave flags as he flew by.

His retirement formally takes effect at 8 p.m. local time — three hours after his departure — when he will become the pope emeritus.

Earlier, in one of his concluding acts, he addressed the cardinals who will elect his successor, urging them to be “like an orchestra” that harmonizes for the good of the Roman Catholic Church and pledging that he would behave with “unconditional reverence and obedience” toward his successor.

After thanking the more than 100 cardinals collectively from a gilded throne in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace, the pope rose and greeted each of them individually.

Draped in a red and gold mantle lined with snow-white ermine, Benedict clasped the cardinals’ hands as they removed their distinctive red skullcaps to greet him and kiss his ring. Benedict told them, “I will be close to you in prayer” as they meet in coming days to choose his successor from their ranks.

“Among you is also the future pope, whom I promise my unconditional reverence and obedience,” Benedict told the cardinals, reflecting the concern among Vatican watchers about what it will mean to have two popes residing in the Vatican.

A day earlier, he blessed the faithful for the last time as pope, saying his tenure had been filled with “light and joy” but also had its darker moments when “the Lord seemed to be sleeping.”

Benedict will initially reside in Castel Gandolfo, a hilltop town outside Rome where popes have summered for centuries. He is expected to stay there for several months before returning to live at the Vatican in a convent whose gardens offer a perfect view of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Many of the cardinals who lined up to bid farewell to Benedict had been appointed to their powerful positions as so-called princes of the church by him or his predecessor,John Paul II, and are thus seen as followers of his doctrinal conservatism.

Benedict shocked the world on Feb. 11 when he announced that, feeling his age and diminishing strength, he would retire, a dramatic step that sent the members of the Vatican hierarchy into a tailspin. He reassured the faithful on Sunday that he was not “abandoning” the church, but would continue to serve, even in retirement.

In an emotional and unusually personal message on Wednesday, his final public audience in St. Peter’s Square, Benedict said that sometimes he felt that “the waters were agitated and the winds were blowing against” the church. His retirement will bring changes in style and substance.

In comparison to the heavy ornate robes he wore to greet the cardinals, Benedict will don a white cassock and brown shoes from Mexico, replacing the red slippers that he and other popes have traditionally worn, the color symbolizing the blood of the martyrs.

The conclave to elect the next pope, which is expected to start by mid-March, will begin amid a swirl of scandal. On Monday, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Britain’s senior Roman Catholic cleric, said he would not participate in the conclave, after having been accused of “inappropriate acts” with several priests, charges that he denies. Other cardinals have also come under fire in sexual abuse scandals, but only Cardinal O’Brien has recused himself.

On Monday, Benedict met with three cardinals he had asked to conduct an investigation into a Vatican scandal in which hundreds of confidential documents were leaked to the press and published in a tell-all book last May, the worst security breach in the church’s modern history. The three cardinals compiled a hefty dossier on the scandal, which Benedict has entrusted only to his successor, not to the cardinals entering the conclave, the Vatican spokesman said earlier this week.

On Thursday, Panorama, a weekly magazine, reported that the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, had been conducting his own investigation into the leaks scandal, including requesting wiretaps on the phones of some members of the Vatican hierarchy. That would be taking a page from the playbook of magistrates in Italy, where wiretaps are extensive.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said on Thursday that in the context of an investigation into the leaks, magistrates of the Vatican, not the secretary of state, “might have authorized some wiretaps or some checks,” but nothing on a significant scale. The idea of “an investigation that creates an atmosphere of fear of mistrust that will now affect the conclave has no foundation in reality.” A shy theologian who appeared to have little interest in the internal politics of the Vatican, Benedict has said that he is retiring “freely, and for the good of the church,” entrusting it to a successor who has more strength than he does. But shadows linger. The next pope will inherit a hierarchy buffeted by crises of governance as well as power struggles over the Vatican Bank, which has struggled to conform to international transparency norms.

Many faithful have welcomed Benedict’s gesture as a sign of humility and humanity, a rational decision taken by a man who no longer feels up to the job.

As he stood near St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday after attending the pope’s last public audience, Vincenzo Petrucci, 26, said he had come to express “not so much solidarity, but more like closeness” to the pope. “At first we felt astonished, shocked and disoriented,” he said. “But then we saw what a weighty decision it must have been. He seemed almost lonely.”

Many in the Vatican hierarchy, known as the Roman Curia, are still reeling from the news. Many are bereaved and others seem almost angry. “We are terribly, terribly, terribly shocked,” one senior Vatican official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.

NY Times