Before the turn of a new year, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI passed away on the last day of 2022 at the age of 95. Today, Jan. 5, 2023, Pope Francis will preside over the funeral of the Pope Emeritus in St. Peter's Square. His remains will then be taken into St. Peter's Basilica and then to the Vatican Grottos where he will be finally laid to rest. 

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), on behalf of its president Bishop of Kalookan Pablo Virgilio S. David, said: “If Pope Francis is known as the ‘Pope of Mercy and Joy,’ Pope Benedict XVI will be remembered as the ‘Pope of Charity.’ He began his episcopacy with a profoundly theological encyclical entitled ‘Deus Caritas Est (God is Love).’”

The statement also added that Benedict XVI will also be remembered as a “great theologian, catechist, and musician.” “He spent the last years of his life as an Emeritus Pope in solitude and contemplation, supporting the universal Church and Pope Francis spiritually with his prayers.”

On his part, Archbishop of Manila Cardinal Jose Advincula called on the faithful to honor the memory of the late Pope, by “learning from his preaching and following his example of Christian life.”  He also added to remember the contributions of the former cardinal from Germany for “courageously witnessing the Gospel in a modern world marred by fractures and skepticism.”

“He prophetically warned us against the ‘dictatorship of relativism,’ from which our post-truth world is now suffering. He proclaimed the truth of the Gospel through the gift of his eloquence, but also more poignantly, through his humility and silence.” 

Vatican News bids farewell to the Pope Emeritus by saying he was a “humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord,” and whose last words on earth, as witnessed by a nurse, were: “Lord, I love you!”  

Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of Vatican News, wrote this very appropriate piece on the Pope Emeritus’ life and contribution to the Church. “If there is one theologian and one Pope who throughout his life reflected and taught on the reasonableness of faith, it was Joseph Ratzinger. It is no coincidence that he also spoke about it in the final lines of his spiritual testament, made public on the day of his death: ‘I have seen, and see, how, out of the tangle of hypotheses, the reasonableness of faith has emerged and is emerging anew. Jesus Christ is truly the Way, the Truth, and the Life — and the Church, in all her shortcomings, is truly His Body.”

In connection, the Vatican published the Pope Emeritus’ spiritual testament, which expressed his final thoughts he wished to share with the Church and the faithful. “If in this late hour of my life I look back at the decades I have gone through, first I see how many reasons I have to give thanks. First and foremost, I thank God himself, the giver of every good gift, who gave me life and guided me through various moments of confusion; always picking me up whenever I began to slip and always giving me again the light of his face,” he wrote. 

We say a prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and remember his life, his teachings, and the dignity in which he conducted his papacy during his time as Pope and until his last days as a man of God.