But he spoke in Italian, the language cardinals most commonly use inside Vatican City and the native tongue of Italy's 28 voting-age cardinals, the most of any single nation.
Held inside Vatican City walls, the General Congregation is a forum where all cardinals, including those over the voting age limit of 80, will discuss the most pressing issues facing the Church.
WSJ: Pope Bids Faithful a Farewell In Emotional, Historic Exit
The long-time theologian is expected eventually to retire to a monastery on a hill inside Vatican City, with officials saying he will not be able intervene publicly in the papacy of his successor, though he may offer advice.
The privately-held Vatican bank, Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), located inside Vatican City, has been at the centre of several financial scandals in recent years, and has been under investigation since 2010 for allegedly omitting data in wire transfers from an Italian account.
Lombardi said Benedict would eventually return to the Vatican and live at a monastery inside the Vatican gardens.
Asked if he might like to go somewhere else, Lombardi said the pope would feel "much safer" inside the Vatican walls.
Gabriele has now been returned to house arrest inside his Vatican apartment, where he has already been confined for several months.
It is his job to supervise the whole election process, with secret votes being held twice daily inside the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.
They will meet in the Sistine Chapel and be housed in a closely monitored residence inside the Vatican city, the Casa Santa Marta.
He said the source worked inside the Vatican but would not reveal details, including the source's gender, age and whether or not they were clergy.
He will enter a spiritual retreat and pray inside the Vatican.
Last year, Benedict XVI ordered three cardinals to carry out an inquiry into a leaks scandal that exposed infighting and wasteful spending by top officials inside the Vatican.
The source worked inside the Vatican, according to Nuzzi, who refused to give other details such as the source's gender, age and if he or she was clergy or not.
CNN: No cardinal suspected of pope papers leak, Vatican insists
The most immediate fallout is that the affair is likely to strengthen the conviction among many cardinals that the next pope has to lead a serious house-cleaning inside the Vatican's bureaucracy.
The leak of a string of highly sensitive internal documents from inside the Vatican's Secretariat of State, including personal letters to Pope Benedict XVI, are an evident embarrassment to the pope, our correspondent says.
BBC: Vatican launches criminal probe into unauthorised leaks
When Benedict announced his intention to resign the first pontiff to do so in 600 years questions immediately swirled about the implications of having two popes living alongside one another inside the Vatican.
His simple new communal home contrasts with the much larger accommodation currently being renovated inside the Vatican for the future use of the now retired former Pope Benedict and his staff, reports the BBC's David Willey in Rome.
The BBC's David Willey, at the Vatican, says that the Pope has, throughout these changes, indicated that he wants to limit the power vacuum inside the Vatican to the shortest possible time after he leaves office on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, the Pope held his last but one general audience inside the Vatican, his first public appearance since he stunned the Church and wider world by saying he would retire at the end of the month.
None of the cardinals will see it, since they will be sequestered inside the Vatican walls, allowed only to go from the Vatican hotel through the gardens to the Sistine Chapel and back again until they have elected a pope.
Pope John Paul II had wanted a residence inside the Vatican walls to host contemplative religious orders, and over the years several different orders have come for spells of a few years, said Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.
Whoever steps into Benedict's red papal shoes will be expected to deal with unresolved questions about alleged corruption, child sex abuse by priests, leaks from inside the Vatican and, most recently, Italian media reports alleging an episode involving gay priests, male prostitutes and blackmail.
Yet in the dying days of his relatively short eight-year papacy, Pope Benedict XVI has been putting out new coded phrases which, upon analysis, reveal the extent of his frustration at the administrative infighting he has had to endure among mainly Italian careerist clerics inside the Vatican.
BBC: Decoding the Papacy: Benedict XVI's cryptic frustration
Closer to home, the next pope has a major challenge awaiting him inside the Vatican walls, after the leaks of papal documents in 2012 exposed ugly turf battles, allegations of corruption and even a plot purportedly orchestrated by Benedict's aides to out a prominent Italian Catholic editor as gay.
His absence also gave workers time to finish up renovations on the monastery on the edge of the Vatican gardens that until last year housed groups of cloistered nuns who were invited for a few years at a time to live inside the Vatican to pray for the pontiff and church at large.
While Pope Emeritus Benedict lived a secluded life inside the Vatican (and plans to live an even more secluded existence in the former convent which is being prepared as his new home in a corner of the Vatican Gardens), Pope John Paul II lived a more gregarious existence, often inviting personal guests to attend his early morning mass and to share his breakfast.
On Saturday, the hearing inside the small Vatican courtroom will begin with final arguments by the prosecution and the defence, after which Mr Gabriele will be asked to make a statement, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told reporters.
Normally in winter, the pope would give his weekly Wednesday general audience inside a hall within Vatican City, but the event was moved outside because of the anticipated huge crowds.
The pope emeritus is expected to stay on at the papal summer residence until new accommodation being prepared for him inside the walls of Vatican City is ready at the end of April.
应用推荐