Pope Francis, 1.3 billion Catholics and the rest of humanity say goodbye today to Joseph Ratzinger after 95 years on Earth. A young man who lived through the horrors of Nazi Germany, he studied philosophy and theology and served his church, rising to become Pope Benedict XVI.
During eight tumultuous years from 2005 to 2013, he led the Holy See through an unsteady age of smartphones and social media and liberal social awakening and political division and pervasive cynicism and a still-unfolding reckoning on sexual abuse.
It wasn’t easy. Benedict had his successes and his stumbles. A complex man with a complex legacy, nothing became his term as pontiff like the leaving it, as he became the first pope in six centuries to abdicate the Throne of Saint Peter.
That humbling act took immense courage. Few men who command great power willingly relinquish it. And when Benedict’s successor, Francis, charted a far different course both stylistically and theologically, many thought the contrast unkind to the living former pope. Francis has a preternatural talent for rising to and shaping the times, for connecting on a human plane, for seeming to elevate the essence and the spirit of the faith over its dogma. The more academic, more defensive Benedict always seemed less joyous in the role, in part because he was staunchly committed to preserving the Church with a capital C and the timeless values as he and other conservatives saw them. To him, the modern world had become a “dictatorship of relativism.”
Though we count ourselves among those who’ve been especially moved by Pope Francis’ way of leading, we appreciate Benedict’s earnest attempt to preserve and protect the faith he loves — a North Star passed down over centuries, even through periodic epochal growing pains — in a rapidly changing world. There is no one true Catholic faith; the power and the glory of Jesus Christ contain multitudes.
Benedict will not be buried as pope. But he will be remembered as pope, and as a righteous servant of God.
— New York Daily News via TNS
