Vatican City - Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, has returned to the Father’s House on Saturday at 9:34 AM.
The Holy See Press Office announced the passing away of the 95-year-old Pope Emeritus at his residence at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery.
Saturday's death of Benedict XVI, born Joseph Ratzinger, comes nearly 10 years after he announced his unexpected resignation on 11 February 2013.
In the next few hours, the Holy See Press Office will communicate details for the funeral rite.
News of worsening health condition
Already for several days, the health conditions of the Pope Emeritus had worsened due to advancing age, as the Press Office had reported in its updates of the evolving situation.
Pope Francis himself publicly shared the news about his predecessor's worsening health at the end of the last General Audience of the year, on 28 December.
Following this invitation, prayer initiatives sprung up and multiplied on all continents, along with an outpouring of messages of solidarity and closeness from secular leaders.
“Teenager” theologian at the Second Vatican Council
Born in 1927 into a simple, very Catholic family in Bavaria and the son of a police commissioner, Joseph Ratzinger was a protagonist of the Church in the last century.
He was ordained a priest together with his brother, Georg, in 1951, earned a doctorate in theology two years later, and in 1957 was licensed to teach as a professor of dogmatic theology. He taught in Freising, Bonn, Münster, Tübingen, and lastly in Regensburg.
His death marks the passing of the last Pope personally involved in the work of the Second Vatican Council. As a young man, already esteemed as a theologian, Ratzinger had followed the council sessions as the peritus of Cardinal Frings of Cologne, leaning toward the reformist wing. He was among those who strongly criticized the preparatory drafts prepared by the Roman Curia, which would later be scrapped by the will of the bishops.
Guardian of the faith under Wojtyla
The future Benedict XVI was also a direct witness of the post-conciliar crisis, of the controversies in the universities and theological faculties.
Just after turning fifty, Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of Munich in 1977, and a few weeks later created him a cardinal. John Paul II then entrusted him with the leadership of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in November 1981. That was the beginning of a strong partnership between the Polish Pope and the Bavarian theologian, destined to end only with the death of Wojtyla.
The most important work he was involved in was certainly the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, a project that lasted six years and was published in 1992.
‘Humble worker in the vineyard’
After the death of John Paul II, the conclave held in 2005 elected Ratzinger – already an old man of 78 years – to succeed him in less than 24 hours. Ratzinger was universally esteemed and respected, even by his adversaries.
Encyclical on love of God
Even if he had often been branded – while Prefect of the former Holy Office – as the panzercardinal, as Pope, Benedict continually spoke of the “joy of being Christian”.
He dedicated his first encyclical, Deus caritas est, to the love of God. “Being Christian”, he wrote, “is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person.”
‘A Church free of money and power’
Facing the scandals created by ecclesiastical careerism, the elderly German Pope continually made appeals calling to conversion, penitence and humility.
During his last journey to Germany, in September 2011, he invited the Church to be less worldly.
“History has shown that, when the Church becomes less worldly, her missionary witness shines more brightly. Once liberated from material and political burdens and privileges, the Church can reach out more effectively and in a truly Christian way to the whole world, she can be truly open to the world.”
-VN