In humility and in truth, in silence and in prayer. This is how Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus, lived, and this is how he left. Elected to the papal throne on March 19, 2005, immediately after the "great Pope John Paul II", in his first words to the crowd from the central loggia of St. Peter's Basilica he described himself as "a simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord". And as such he appeared, with the sleeves of his black shirt protruding from his papal cassock, the sign of a
choice that may not have been expected.
Shy, but very cultured, simple in manners but complex in thought and never banal. A tireless worker. He demonstrated this in the countless years he spent in the Roman Curia as an irreplaceable collaborator of his predecessor, in one of the most important and solid dicasteries, the then Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Also on the day of his election, he defined himself as an "insufficient instrument", comforted by the fact that the Lord would know how to use him in the best possible way, without lacking "his permanent help", with the complicity of his Blessed Mother Mary. He asked for prayers.
For almost eight years, until his resignation, which became effective on February 28, 2013, he did not give up in the face of any obstacle, he put (and put again) his hand to the plow and began to shore up in its fundamental elements the edifice of the Church, which had just landed with all humanity in a new millennium full of changes and "shocks", recently orphaned of an imposing spiritual guide, who had accompanied him by the hand for more than 27 years.
His destiny had become clear on the day of the funeral of St. John Paul II, when he delivered that moving homily that began with the word "Follow me. A few days earlier - at the Way of the Cross in the Colosseum, meditating on the ninth station, the third fall of Jesus - he had then "taken it upon himself" to denounce "filth in the Church," but also pride and self-sufficiency.
His dream was to return to his homeland, to devote himself to reading and to enjoy his passion for cats and his love of classical music. Instead, he had to take on all those problems he had learned to know so well, and also bear the brunt of criticism and misunderstanding, but he had to take on all those problems he had learned to know so well, and also bear the cross of criticism and misunderstanding.
paving the way for a process of reform that his successor - Pope Francis - has been able to continue with ease. He did so with humility and in truth.
An unprecedented task that surpasses all human capabilities
"An unprecedented task, which truly surpasses all human capacity". On Sunday, April 24, 2005, Benedict XVI began his Petrine ministry as Bishop of Rome, in a St. Peter's Square packed with more than 400,000 people. And in outlining the gravity and weight of the mandate he felt he had to assume, he said that, in the end, his program of government would not be "to follow my own ideas, but to listen, with the whole Church, to the word and will of the Lord and to allow myself to be guided
for Him, so that He himself may guide the Church in this hour of our history". God's will that "does not push us away, but purifies us - perhaps even painfully - and thus leads us to ourselves".
Be willing to suffer
The theme of suffering appears often in the investiture speech, as when he explains that "to love [the people God entrusts to us] means also to be ready to suffer", "to give the sheep the true good, the food of God's truth, of God's word, the food of his presence".
These words, read in retrospect, sound like a prophecy. Certainly, Benedict XVI was not spared any suffering, but he always lived it in a spirit of service and humility. Looking back over the almost eight years of his pontificate, some outstanding contributions that the first Pope Emeritus in history left as a legacy to the whole Church stand out.
The three encyclicals
The first contribution is undoubtedly magisterial. A few months into his pontificate, Benedict XVI signed his first Encyclical, "Deus caritas est" (God is love), in which he explains how man, created in the image of God-love, is capable of experiencing charity; initially written in German and signed on Christmas Day 2005, it was distributed the following month.
On November 30, 2007, "Spe salvi" (Saved in Hope) was published, which brings Christian hope face to face with modern forms of hope based on earthly achievements, which lead to replacing trust in God with a mere faith in progress. But only an infinite perspective such as that offered by God through Christ can give true joy.
The latest encyclical bearing his signature is dated June 29, 2009 and is entitled "Caritas in veritate" (Love in truth). Here the Pontiff reviews the Church's teachings on social justice and invites Christians to rediscover the ethics of commercial and economic relations, always placing the person and the values that preserve his or her good at the center.
He was preparing a fourth encyclical to complete the trilogy dedicated to the three theological virtues; it would be published by Pope Francis on June 29, 2013, in the Year of Faith, completing the main part of the work that Ratzinger had already prepared. It is entitled "Lumen fidei".
Four Post-Synodal Exhortations
Eucharist, Word, Africa and the Middle East are, for their part, the themes of the four apostolic exhortations that saw the light of day under the pontificate of Benedict XVI, crowning four Synods of Bishops that took place respectively in 2005, generating the "Sacramentum caritatis" (2006); in 2008, with the publication of "Verbum Domini" (2010); in 2009, which gave rise to the exhortation "Africae munus" (2011); and in 2010, which two years later gave rise to the document "Ecclesia in Medio Oriente".
Therein lies the importance of the sacraments, and the closeness to the peripheries of the world, places where the Church is very much alive, rich in vocations, but where the effort "from Rome" to be more present in those lands is often lacking.
The Jesus of Nazareth trilogy
Thanks to his passion for study and his qualities as a fine theologian, in the years of his pontificate Benedict XVI has also given the community of believers three important books on the historical figure of Jesus, published respectively in 2007, 2011 and 2012. The narrative journey begins with the "Infancy of Jesus" and continues through the public life of the Messiah, up to the resurrection.
It has been an unprecedented publishing success, and many believers have been edified by the account of the Person-Jesus. A pilgrim of the peoples, he did not interrupt his predecessor's tradition of apostolic journeys both in Italy and abroad; a series inaugurated four months into his pontificate by traveling to his homeland for World Youth Day in Cologne. He returned to Germany twice more, in 2006 (to Bavaria, where the well-known "Regensburg incident" occurred) and in 2011, on an official visit to the country. In total, Benedict XVI has made 24 apostolic trips abroad, several to Europe (three times to Spain), but also to Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Cuba), the United States (2008), Africa (Cameroon, Benin) and Australia (2008).
No doubt his trip to the Holy Land, visiting Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian National Authority in May 2009 was very significant, as was his visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp in the same month three years earlier, where he prayed to honor the memory of the Jews, Poles, Russians, Gypsies and representatives of twenty-five nations murdered by Nazi hatred.
He also made more than thirty pastoral visits and pilgrimages in Italy and as many in the diocese of Rome, visiting parishes, shrines, basilicas, prisons, hospitals and seminaries. For history
will remain his visit to L'Aquila in 2009, immediately after the earthquake, when he went to pray over the remains of Celestine V, on whose tomb shrine he placed his pallium, a premonition that many have associated with his future resignation.
Accidents
At the beginning of his Petrine ministry, Benedict XVI had referred to the sufferings, and unfortunately this was one of the elements from which he was not spared at all, starting with some misunderstandings and controversies that had an international echo.
The first of these dates back to 2006, with the famous "lectio magistralis" at the University of Regensburg during his second trip to Germany, visiting Bavaria. In this case, the incident arose from the unfortunate quotation of a phrase of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus on holy war, with references to the Prophet Muhammad. In his speech, the Pope had recalled the declaration "Nostra Aetate" and the attitude of the Church towards non-Christian religions, but by then the misunderstanding had already occurred, and in the Islamic world there were violent reactions.
Later, Benedict XVI publicly apologized, saying that he "regretted it" and making it clear that he did not share the thinking expressed in the quoted text. Fortunately, in the following years cultural and theological exchanges between Catholics and Muslims flourished, culminating even in a meeting at the Vatican between a delegation of Islamic theologians and intellectuals and the Pontiff himself. This was undoubtedly the prelude to the "Document on Human Fraternity" that Pope Francis was able to sign several years later in Abu Dhabi with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar.
A second incident took place in Rome, involving the capital's main university, "La Sapienza", where a group of more than 60 university professors opposed the visit of Benedict XVI, who had been invited by the then rector to speak at the inauguration of the academic year in 2008. After the flurry of controversy, the Holy See declined the invitation. Nine years later, in 2017, his successor Francis was instead able to visit another Roman civil university, "Roma Tre".
After the misunderstanding with the Muslims, in 2009 came the incident with the Jewish world. Benedict XVI had decided to remit the excommunication of four Lefebvrian bishops, among whom was Richard
Williamson. After this gesture it came to light - through the Swedish television SVT - that in the past the Monsignor had publicly expressed denialist positions on the Shoah. Also in this case, the Holy See was forced to issue a note which, in addition to confirming the condemnation and remembrance of the genocide of the Jews, required Bishop Williamson to distance himself "absolutely unequivocally and publicly from his positions regarding the Shoah" before being admitted to episcopal functions in the Church, clarifying that these positions were not known to the Pope at the time of the remission of the excommunication.
Other criticisms arose during his trip to Cameroon and Angola in March 2009, when he stated on the plane that the distribution of condoms would not be a solution against AIDS; a statement stigmatized by governments, politicians, scientists and humanitarian organizations with repercussions also at the diplomatic level.
Fight against abuses
And yet, under the pontificate of Benedict XVI, the whole process of combating abuse in the Church, which Pope Francis has been able to continue with greater fluidity, gained irreversible momentum. Pope Ratzinger was the first pontiff to explicitly ask for forgiveness from victims of clerical abuse and to meet with them on several occasions, for example on trips abroad.
He was drastic in expelling several clergymen responsible for such crimes and in establishing the first stricter rules and guidelines against these phenomena.
One example among many is the treatment of the "Maciel case," which Ratzinger had already had occasion to examine in depth during his years as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.As Pontiff, he arranged for the Congregation of the Legionaries to receive an Apostolic Visitation, as a result of which a Pontifical Delegate was appointed - the late Cardinal Velasio De Paolis - which then led to the revision of the statutes and regulations, after the founder's guilt was publicly acknowledged and a complete process of renewal and healing was set in motion.
Another phenomenon is that of Ireland, following the publication of the Ryan and Murphy reports that denounced numerous cases of sexual abuse of minors by priests and religious from the 1930s to the year 2000, with attempts at cover-up by the local Church. Already in 2006, addressing the country's bishops who had come to Rome on an "ad limina" visit, Benedict XVI said that "the wounds caused by such acts are deep, and the task of restoring trust where they have been damaged is urgent." Moreover, it is necessary "to take every measure to avoid a repetition in the future, to ensure full respect for the principles of justice and, above all, to heal the victims and all those affected by these abominable crimes."
Four years later he wrote a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland in which he confided to them that he "shared the dismay and sense of betrayal" they had experienced, and addressing the culprits he added: "you must answer for this before Almighty God, as well as before the duly constituted courts".
The Consistories
Throughout his pontificate, Benedict XVI presided over five consistories for the creation of new cardinals, creating a total of 90 "eminences", of whom 74 were electors. Significantly, in the last one, on November 24, 2012, besides being the second Consistory in the same year (since 1929 there had not been two different creations of cardinals in the same year), this time there were no European cardinals present, almost as if inaugurating a tradition of "fishing" collaborators of the Pope even far from Rome. Something that has become very common with Pope Francis.
It was the year of the creation of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Metropolitan Archbishop of Manila (Philippines), or Baselios Cleemis Thottunka, Major Archbishop of Trivandrum of the Syro-Malankars (India), for example.
Disclaimer
The last act remaining in the history of Benedict XVI's pontificate is undoubtedly his resignation, announced on February 11, 2013 during a Consistory for certain causes of canonization as a "decision of great importance for the life of the Church."
Among the motivations that led him to this decision - made with absolute humility and a spirit of service to the Church, also in this case - was the awareness that "to steer the boat of St. Peter one also needs vigor of body and soul, vigor which, in recent months, has diminished in me to such an extent that I have to acknowledge my inability to administer well the ministry entrusted to me".
Words of a unique cleanliness, offered with heart in hand, and with the freedom of one who is not afraid to recognize his own limitations, while at the same time being ready to serve the Lord "no less suffering and praying".
Faithful to his word, Benedict XVI dedicated the last years of his life to pray for the Church, in the "hidden place" of the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, with his heart, with reflection and with all his inner strength, as he said in his last greeting to the faithful from the Loggia of the Apostolic Palace of Castel Gandolfo on February 28, almost ten years ago. As a pilgrim "in the last stage of his pilgrimage on this earth," which has now reached its fulfillment, watch over us from Heaven!
