Pope Benedict XVI, 1927-2022 - "Humble Worker in the Vineyard of the Lord"

• Farewell to Benedict XVI: ‘Humble worker in vineyard of the Lord'

  Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has returned to the Father’s House.

  The Holy See Press Office announced that the Pope Emeritus died at 9:34 AM on Saturday morning in his residence at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, which the 95-year-old Pope emeritus had chosen as his residence after resigning from the Petrine ministry in 2013.

“With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 AM in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican. Further information will be provided as soon as possible. As of Monday morning, 2 January 2023, the body of the Pope Emeritus will be in Saint Peter's Basilica so the faithful can bid farewell."

• Pope Benedict XVI’s last words: ‘Jesus, I love you.’, by Gerard O'Connell. America 12/31/22:

  “Jesus, ich liebe dich!” Jesus, I love you. These were the final words that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI uttered before he died, a powerful final expression of love and faith.

  The news was first reported by Elisabetta Piqué (my wife), the Rome correspondent, in La Nación, the Argentine daily, which published it online this evening.

  Immediately after Benedict had died, the German Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Benedict’s private secretary, phoned Pope Francis to inform him of the former pope’s death. Francis arrived by car at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery 10 minutes later; he was the first person to arrive at Benedict’s deathbed and, once there, he imparted a final blessing to him and prayed in silence for some minutes besides his body.

• Benedict XVI has died. What happens next? The Pillar 12/31/22. Here's what we know about the funeral, burial, and mourning for Pope emeritus Benedict XVI.
• Death of Pope Emeritus Benedict: his official biography Vatican News. 12/31/22.
• Benedict XVI: Key events of his pontificate Vatican News. 12/31/22. The papacy of the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was momentous and focused on the goal of bringing "God back to the centre".

* * *

Reflections

• A Methodist Appreication of Benedict XVI, by Paul T. Stallsworth. First Things 01/19/23.
• On the Death of Benedict XVI, by Martin Mosebach. 01/13/23:

  ... One of the distortions imposed upon the pontificate of Benedict XVI in the media and by theologians is the suggestion that he sympathized with the clerical anti-Jewishness found in the past. On the contrary, Benedict is the pope who, regarding the Church’s relationship with the Jewish world, went far beyond his predecessor in asking for forgiveness and making gestures of reconciliation. He not only regarded hostility to Jews as a blemish on the part of the Church: He held it to be an attack on the Church’s very foundation. A large part of his academic work was concerned with the Jewish identity of Jesus Christ. He was tireless in showing that the New Testament is connected, sentence by sentence, with Jewish revelation. For him, the Old Testament and the New Testament constitute one single book. The famous definition in Pascal’s Memorial—“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob; not the God of the philosophers and scholars”—was, for Benedict, the protecting wall that guarded the Christian religion from speculations and a false spiritualism. It was in the Chosen People that God became man, and the fact that most Jews were not able to follow him does not change the reality: The Church will remain bound to Judaism until the end of days. At the same time, in his relationship with the Jews he had nothing in common with that superficial harmony envisaged by today’s indifferentism. Not everything can be reconciled on Earth.

• Rémi Brague: Ratzinger’s ‘Progressivism’ During Vatican II Was Really an Effort to Return to the Sources of the Faith Solène Tadié. National Catholic Register 01/10/23:

  "... he gave us, theologians and intellectuals of all stripes, the model of what he called an “hermeneutic of continuity,” in contradistinction to any attempt at a break with the past"

• The Josias Podcast, Episode XXXI: Pope Benedict XVI. Urban Hannon, Matthew Walther, and the Rev. Jon Tveit join Pater Edmund to discuss the life, death, and writings of Pope Benedict XVI. 01/13/23
• Pope Benedict XVI: An Appreciation, by Mark Gottlieb. The Public Discourse 01/09/23:

  Benedict was, simply put, a man of Europe, a man of the West. A proud son of Bavaria and Germany, of course, but more than any great religious leader of the twentieth and, now, twenty-first centuries, Benedict had the soul of a European. Music, art, belles-lettres, history, philosophy, political thought, theology, Benedict ranged over these contributions to culture like a colossus. Benedict’s analysis of the “peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological” that continues plaguing our culture is both devastating and prophetic. “All that it sees in [the West’s] own history is the despicable and destructive; it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure. What Europe needs is a new self-acceptance, a self-acceptance that is critical and humble, if it truly wishes to survive.”

  Jews and Christians both must rally around Benedict’s call to defend and celebrate the legacy of the West: the rule of law, the respect for the dignity of man, the institutions of marriage and family, the love of our neighbor, the one most like us, which becomes the basis for the love of the truly other, even—and especially—the one most unlike us. These are the gifts of the West. True, a West that has not always lived its ideals. Benedict knew this gap, saw this schism with his very own eyes. But without those ideals, civilization, and not merely the civilization of Jerusalem and Athens, of Rome, London, and Paris but all civilization, must come to a sorry, still end. And Benedict was one of her most gifted and courageous champions.

• In Memoriam: Benedict XVI (1927–2022), by Cyril O'Regan. Churchlife Journal 01/09/23:

  Teaching, prophetic witness, and vision will be Benedict’s abiding legacy. Each was intrinsic to who he was; together they were constitutive. They define him across his entire life, indicating the flavor of the person, what Gerard Manley Hopkins would speak of as “inscape.” He was not John Paul II, whose extraordinary life and passion was the fuel that fed the blaze of Spirit. He was always the shy, retiring priest and the modest theologian anxious to set himself aside in order to think more than he could think, do more than he could do, and love more than he could love.

• Farewell Reflections on Benedict XVI, by Boniface. Unam Sanctam Catholicam 01/08/23.
• A legacy of truth-seeking: Pope Benedict XVI and interreligious dialogue, by Ines Angeli Murzaku. Catholic World Report 01/07/23. "Contrary to widespread misunderstandings, Benedict’s pontificate made notable strides in dialoguing with other religious, especially Islam."
• Twenty-three authors: “My favorite book by Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI” Catholic World Report 01/06/23. Theologians, philosophers, novelists, catechists, editors, and others discuss a specific work by Ratzinger/Benedict that especially influenced, shaped, inspired, and challenged them.
• A beginner’s guide to reading Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, by Carl Olson. Catholic World Report 01/05/23.
• Benedict remembered for role in pushing US bishops to confront clergy abuse, by Christopher White. National Catholic Reporter 01/05/23.
• A Believer in an Age of Skeptics, by John Hirschauer. The American Conservative 01/05/23. Benedict XVI was willing to give his entire life to Jesus Christ when most men lived for themselves.
• What it was like to learn from Joseph Ratzinger in the 1970s, by Fr. D. Vincent Twomey. Catholic World Report 01/04/23. How my life and thought were profoundly marked and shaped by my six years studying under Ratzinger at the University of Regensburg.
• The True Joseph Ratzinger, by George Weigel. The Catholic World Report 01/04/23. The key to the true Joseph Ratzinger, and to his greatness, was the depth of his love for the Lord Jesus — a love refined by an extraordinary theological and exegetical intelligence.
• A Monk of Le Barroux Reflects on His Friendship with Ratzinger Rorate-Caeli 01/04/23. Dom Louis-Marie Geyer d'Orth O.S.B., Abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of Sainte-Madeleine Le Barroux, published this reflection at L'homme nouveau on Jan. 4.
• The first green pope: How Benedict's eco-theology paved the way for Francis, by Brian Roewe. National Catholic Reporter 01/04/23.
• Father Fessio on ‘Professor Ratzinger,’ the future Benedict XVI. Interview w/ Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ. Catholic World Report 01/04/23.
• Benedict XVI: Disciple, by Thomas G. Guarino. First Things 01/03/23.
• ‘Flavors of home’: Benedict XVI’s favorite restaurant in Rome, by Hannah Brockhaus. Catholic News Agency. 01/03/23:

  Mario Notari recalled one humorous moment with Ratzinger.

  When a neighbor and client of the restaurant lost her dog, Cantina Tirolese hung up a sign with information about the dog and how to contact the owner if he was found.

  "That evening, when the cardinal was going down the stairs, he gave a glance at what was written on the paper, and smiling... he said, ‘but I am not lost,'" the manager recounted, pointing out that the lost dog was a German shepherd, a common nickname for the theologian.

• The life, faith, and struggle of Joseph Ratzinger: An interview with Peter Seewald. Catholic World Report 01/01/23. The veteran German journalist discusses his new biography of Benedict XVI, and reflects in detail on Ratzinger’s childhood, personality, education, and role in key Church events.
• Benedict XVI: thinker, preacher, saint? Scholars and former students discuss legacy, by Kevin J. Jones. Catholic News Agency. 01/01/23.
• Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI Death - Exclusive Interview with Msgr. Georg Gänswein ETWN. [Video Interview] 12/31/22.
• On the Death of Pope Benedict XVI, by Edward Feser. 12/31/22.
• Benedict XVI: A look back at the cat-loving pope’s favorite feline friends, by Courtney Mares. Catholic News Agency. 01/01/23. "The late Benedict XVI was known for his intellectual acumen as a theologian and philosopher, but perhaps his most relatable quality was that he was a cat person."
• Benedict XVI: ‘Father of Catechism of the Catholic Church’, by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. Vatican News. 12/31/22. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s role in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, a compendium of Catholic doctrine for our own times.
• ‘God is love’: The key to Benedict’s pontificate, by Andrea Tornielli. Vatican News. 12/31/22.
• Fr. Lombardi: ‘Benedict spent his life seeking the face of Jesus’, by Frederico Lombardi, SJ. Vatican News. 12/31/22.
• The Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI, by The Editors. Commonweal 12/31/22.
• What Pope Benedict Taught Me About Faith, by Sohrab Amari. New York Times 12/31/22.

This post will provide an ongoing compilation of coverage, reflections and remembrances of Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI