Church says farewell to Benedict XVI

by Simon Hart

‘Kindness, joy and humility.’ These were the words that L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, chose when summing up the qualities of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on its front page in the wake of his death on 31 December.

Here in the Archdiocese of Liverpool, Archbishop Malcolm McMahon responded to the news of the former pontiff’s passing with similar words. ‘A gracious, kind and gentle man,’ he said of Benedict XVI, who died at the age of 95, a decade after he had resigned as Pope citing failing health.

The Pope Emeritus had been living in the Vatican and it was there – in the Vatican Grottoes – that he was buried following a Requiem Mass on the morning of Thursday 5 January. Some 60,000 people gathered in the cold in St Peter’s Square for a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis. It was the first time in over 200 years that a reigning Pontiff had blessed the body of his predecessor before burial.

The Archdiocese of Liverpool marked Pope Emeritus Benedict’s passing with a Mass at 11.00 am in the Metropolitan Cathedral on New Year’s Day and another at 7.00 pm on Tuesday 10 January.

Archbishop Malcolm said of him: ‘Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is in my thoughts and prayers as I remember a gracious, kind and gentle man who was courteous and welcoming to all he met. These qualities shone through his Papal ministry and in his years of prayerful support for the Church following his retirement in 2013.’

The Archbishop cited a personal encounter with Benedict in Rome, during his time as a Cardinal in 2002. ‘I was given half an hour yet we chatted for nearly an hour,’ he recalled. ‘He was so affable and friendly and he just came across as an entirely different person from the one I’d read about in the press.

‘He remembered you when you went to see him. He was like that with everyone – a personal word for people. He was a real gentleman.’

According to Archbishop Malcolm, the late Pope Emeritus was a man

Pope Francis at the Requiem Mass

for whom study and prayer were very similar and whose greatest legacy will be the wisdom found in his writings. These included his three encyclicals: ‘Deus caritas est’ (2005), ‘Spe salvi’ (2007) and ‘Caritas in veritate’ (2009).

The Archbishop explained: ‘He was not only a great theologian, he was a great writer and able to put things across so that ordinary people, who do not have theological training, will understand the message.’

‘The German shepherd’

For Father Sean Riley, who travelled to Rome for the funeral, there was something particularly significant about Benedict’s first encyclical, ‘Deus caritas est’.

He said: ‘People thought he would start with something really doctrinal yet ‘Deus caritas est’ was his first encyclical – God is love.

‘He was elected when I was halfway through my seminary formation and I always felt an affinity to him through his theology, particularly his studies of the fathers of the Church,’ added Father Sean, as he reflected on his desire to say a personal farewell to the Pope Emeritus.

‘The press portrayed him as the “Panzer Cardinal”, or God’s Rottweiler, but he was the German shepherd. He always spoke with gentleness. It was thought he’d be a great enforcer yet he sought to deepen communion within the Church and to speak to the world about the centrality of Christ.’

Father Sean was struck by the ‘reverential silence’ he encountered inside St Peter’s on the day before the funeral, as Benedict XVI lay in state. Late that afternoon he saw people from ‘all parts of the world’ come together to say the Rosary for the response of his soul.

‘It was a very beautiful and simple Requiem Mass the next morning,’ added Father Sean, noting that this simplicity is just what Benedict would have wanted - not only to indicate he was no longer Pope - but also given his description of himself as a ‘humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord’ following his election as the 265th Pope in April 2005.

In a short homily, Pope Francis said: ‘Like the women at the tomb, we too have come with the fragrance of gratitude and the balm of hope, in order to show him once more the love that is undying.

‘We want to do this with the same wisdom, tenderness and devotion that he bestowed upon us over the years. Together, we want to say: “Father, into your hands we commend his spirit”.’

A life less ordinary

Benedict XVI was born as Joseph Ratzinger in Marktl am Inn in the diocese of Passau in Germany on 16 April 1927. Son of a police commissioner, he spent his formative years in Traunstein, a small village near the Austrian border, less than 20 miles from Salzburg.

As a teenager he was forced to join the Hitler Youth and conscripted into antiaircraft work. He witnessed the hostility towards the Catholic Church from the Nazi regime and later reflected how ‘the brutality of the system, its totally inhuman face, turned me instead to the right path’.

From 1946 to 1951 he studied Philosophy and Theology in the Higher School of Philosophy and Theology of Freising and at the University of Munich. Following his ordination as a priest in June 1951, he began teaching theology in Freising and, after completing his doctorate, was subsequently a lecturer in Bonn, Munster, Tubingen and Regensburg.

In 1962, the future Pontiff became a theological consultant to Cardinal Joseph Frings at the Second Vatican Council. He was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising in 1977 and chose as his episcopal motto ‘Co-operators of the truth’. Explaining why, he reflected that ‘in today’s world the theme of truth is omitted almost entirely, as something too great for man, and yet everything collapses if truth is missing.’

In the same year, Pope Paul VI made him a Cardinal and his subsequent roles inside the Vatican included Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and President of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and of the International Theological Commission. Between 1986-92 he was President of the Preparatory Commission for the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In 1998 Pope John Paul II made him ViceDean of the College of Cardinals and he was elected Dean four years later. With his election as Pope on 19 April 2005 he became the oldest person elected Pontiff since 1730.

For British Catholics, a highlight of his papacy was his four-day visit to Britain from 16-19 September 2010. It began with him being received by Queen Elizabeth II in Edinburgh and ended in the West Midlands where he beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman at an open-air Mass in Birmingham.

Archbishop Malcolm said: ‘His visit in 2010 will be remembered for the joy he brought to the Church and the support which he gave to so many in this country.’

On 11 February 2013, Benedict XVI announced his intention to resign, becoming the first Pontiff to do so in almost 600 years.

‘After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,’ he explained.

He lived the last years of his life in the Vatican, in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, devoting himself to prayer and meditation.