Pope Benedict XVI

The announcement this morning of the death of Pope Benedict XVI was no surprise after the indications given this week about his health but there is still the sense of diminishment. In that way it is very similar to the feelings one felt at the death of the late Queen last September. The inevitable has finally happened. There is still a sense of real loss, but also immense gratitude for a life well lived in the service of high ideals. In a sense too we mourned his passing in 2013, but still appreciating the fact that he could enjoy a prayerful retirement as we prayed for his continued influence in the life of the Church.

There is something apposite in the fact that he has died on the feast of a canonised Pope - St Sylvester so important to the Constantinian Peace of the Church.

Pope Benedict had a remarkable life that encapsulates that of the Church since 1945, and most of it at the centre as a participant at Vatican II - and for his concern as to the direction the Church appeared to be taking in its wake. Against that background as an academic theologian, as Cardinal, both in Munich and then at the CDF, and finally as Pope here wasa first class mind and a man of great personal kindness. 

The first German born Pope since the mid-eleventh century and the beginning of what became the Hidebrandine reform, and the first Pope to abdicate since 1415, or, in so much as it was a personal rather than a political choice, arguably since 1294 his Pontificate is a reminder of the antiquity and centrality of the Papacy in our culture. Amongst so many intellectual gifts he had a deep sense of history in terms of his own life and that of the Church.

He bequeaths a great legacy as an erudite, elegant and eloquent theologian. That is a very rich inheritance for the Church and the faithful. 

Cardinal Nichols, with his usual clarity expresses all that in his statement on the news.

Pope Benedict was elected just after my reception into full peace and communion in 2005. In that, and in so much more, I am very much a “Benedict XVI Catholic” - and proud to be one. I saw him on his visit to this country both as he was conveyed from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey and then again at the Birmingham Mass where he beatified John Henry Newman 

In particular he touched my life and practice with his two moto propriu decrees on the liturgy and on Anglican converts. 

I rejoiced at the freedom accorded by Summorum Pontificum to the celebration of the traditional Roman rite, to which I am ever more drawn. This was also an elegant and pragmatic solution to the liturgical problems facing the Church.

Anglicanorum Cœtibus was also elegant and pragmatic, seeking the ideal of unity and respectful of cultural history. Although I was already a fully practising Catholic it was an initiative that I was anxious to support as a former Anglican. It is a great pity that more people have not - so far - responded positively to it.

On his election as Pope he described himself as a humble labourer in the vineyard. I think that is how he truly saw himself, even if so many others saw him as a giant.

 

He is indeed one of those to whom the Dominical words “Well done thou good and faithful servant” can be applied.

May he rest in peace