SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio's Catholic head paid tribute to the late Pope Benedict XVI Saturday, commemorating him as a figure with "a brilliant intellectual mind" who led "with wisdom and contemplative prayer" during his time as global head of the church.
Benedict passed away Saturday at the age of 95, according to the Vatican, resulting in a global outpouring of remembrance for a conservative-minded pope who in 2013 became the first in 600 years to resign. Among those who contributed words were Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller, who will further honor Benedict during Sunday's 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. masses at San Fernando Cathedral.
García-Siller recalled his having interacted with Benedict on multiple occasions, including a pallium mass in 2011.
"When the pope placed the pallium on my shoulders, I told him of this desire for unity. The Holy Father responded, 'San Antonio, Texas, yes!'," García-Siller wrote. "Few words, but very meaningful."
Benedict stunned the world on Feb. 11, 2013, when he announced, in his typical, soft-spoken Latin, that he no longer had the strength to run the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church that he had steered for eight years through scandal and indifference.
His dramatic decision paved the way for the conclave that elected Pope Francis as his successor. The two popes then lived side-by-side in the Vatican gardens, an unprecedented arrangement that set the stage for future “popes emeritus” to do the same.
And now Francis will celebrate Benedict's funeral Mass on Thursday, the first time in the modern age that a current pope will eulogize a retired one. As tributes poured in from political and religious leaders around the world, Francis himself praised Benedict’s “kindness” Saturday and thanked him for “his testimony of faith and prayer, especially in these final years of retired life.”
Speaking during a New Year’s Eve vigil, Francis said only God knew “of his sacrifices offered for the good of the church.”
The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger never wanted to be pope, planning at age 78 to spend his final years writing in the “peace and quiet” of his native Bavaria.
Instead, he was forced to follow the footsteps of the beloved St. John Paul II and run the church through the fallout of the clerical sex abuse scandal and then a second scandal that erupted when his own butler stole his personal papers and gave them to a journalist.
Being elected pope, he once said, felt like a “guillotine” had come down on him.
Nevertheless, he set about the job with a single-minded vision to rekindle the faith in a world that, he frequently lamented, seemed to think it could do without God.
“In vast areas of the world today, there is a strange forgetfulness of God,” he told 1 million young people gathered on a vast field for his first foreign trip as pope, to World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, in 2005. “It seems as if everything would be just the same even without him.”
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