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THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

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On February 5, approaching the 5th anniversary of his historic renunciation of the Papacy, Benedict XVI wrote a letter to editorialist Massimo Franco at Corriere
della Sera to thank all who continue to think of him and wish him well...




I am very touched that so many readers of your newspaper wish to know how I am doing in this last period of my life. I can only say in this regard that, with the slow decline of my physical strength, interiorly, I am on a pilgrimage towards Home. It is a great grace for me to be surrounded, in this last stretch of the road which is sometimes quite trying, by love and goodness such as I had not imagined. In this sense, I consider even the questions from your readers as an accompaniment along the way. For this, I cannot do other than to give thanks, while assuring you all of my prayers.





Benedict XI and his letter to Corriere:
‘I am in pilgrimage towards Home’
The emeritus Pope responds to so many readers who ask how he is doing
in a letter delivered by hand to the Rome office of our newspaper

By Massimo Franco
Translated from
CORRIERE DELLA SERA
February 6, 2018

The letter, URGENT BY HAND DELIVERY, arrived yesterday at the Rome office of Corriere della Sera from the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, V-120, Vatican City, the ‘hermitage’ within the Sacred Walls where the emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, has lived since he renounced the papacy five years ago.

But it seemed to have come from another world, much farther than the few kilometers that mark the physical distance between the two places. The envelop contained a folded parchment enclosing another sealed envelop that contained a message of nine lines. A message with strong words, true, and not formal: a gesture of exquisite attention to those who have been asking ‘How is Papa Benedetto doing?” – in short, how he is living what he himself calls in the letter “this last period of my life”.

A few days earlier, through a private channel, we had asked him for a message, confident we would get a response. After five years in which he has practically disappeared from the public horizon, meeting a few friends and other privileged guests from all walks of life, cutting down on his walks through the Vatican Gardens, now moving with the aid of a wheeled walker, he may have thought he has been forgotten.

Probably unaware that his figure remains very present, in the epochal ‘first’ of ‘two popes’ co-existing within the Vatican walls. However, his days without media coverage, with rare photographs and even rarer appearances at some Vatican ceremony to which he has been invited by Pope Francis, have both sharpened and magnified his profile.

Benedict XVI is around, ‘hovering’ somehow without wishing to. Perhaps he is rooted in public memory precisely because he has sought to dissolve himself in an existential limbo to leave the stage entirely to his successor – that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of who he once said “whose handwriting is even tinier mine”.

But his signature to the letter is minuscule – as if it has been shrinking along with his physical energies, even showing perhaps that it has become difficult for him to write. [Perhaps that explains why Franco chose not to include the signature in the reproduction of the letter.]

They say that, in private, he notes this with some sadness – that he can no longer dedicate himself to writing those texts of great theological refinement which for decades had traced the course of the Catholic Church. Yet he accepts his physical weakness. In his words, which are said in gratitude but at the same time, almost seem like a farewell, one grasps more than one message.

His reference to “the slow decline of his physical strength”, the confession of being “interiorly in pilgrimage towards Home” (with a capital H); and his ‘thank you’ to ‘the so many readers’ of Corriere who continue to ask after him: a few well-chosen words which convey great depth. Perhaps, in the admiration and in the nostalgia for Benedict XVI which now and then is expressed in some sectors of the Catholic world, one senses that the ‘trauma’ of his renunciation onFebruary 11, 2013 – a truly historic and in many ways unprecedented departure - has not been completely assimilated.

But there is also an acknowledgment of an exemplary relationship with his successor in these five years. [Franco is imagining this.] A coexistence that does not follow any rules, but depends only on the character of two completely different persons, despite the official insistence of continuity between their two pontificates.

It was not taken for granted that ‘two popes’ in the Vatican would succeed in coexisting without ‘overlapping’, or worse, sending a message of division. If there are any differences between them, it remains a ‘secret’ between them – as if they each know that the important thing is to maintain unity in a Church that is beset by a thousand and one tensions.

It is a sign of his spiritual strength and humility that he sublimates in addressing those who express an interest in him in a tone of near familiarity: “I can do no other but to give thanks”.

Benedict XVI:
On his way Home, in silence

by 'Gregorio'
Translated from

February 8, 2018

Benedict XVI’s letter to Massimo Franco last week has stirred up much emotion. The journalist had asked him, on behalf of his readers, how he was doing, and the emeritus Pope replied with nine lines which may seem little but really say everything.

Joseph Ratzinger lives in retirement and in silence, after having been in the spotlights of global media and the reference point for more than a billion persons. Yet, after all the hubbub, he chose a monastic life. A lesson, perhaps the most important one from his life, that leads back to the essence of the Christian experience. Catholicism, in particular, is an encounter with the silence of eternity, abandonment of the noise of the world. Only in silence does one encounter God and repair that bond with him that the world has been seeking to cut off.

Cardinal Sarah’s book, The Power of Silence, helps us to understand Benedict’s choice. Jesus himself lived 30 years in the silence of his privacy, and during his public ministry, often went off to pray by himself. Aware of his example, hermits and cloistered religious live in prayer and contemplation. And so, Pope Benedict chose the ‘Benedict option’, the way of life prescribed by the saint of 'the Rule'.

Indeed, unbridled activism it is not necessary to be Christian. Rather, Cardinal Sarah points out, continual activism – that which never ceases not even to say a prayer or to give thanks – is itself a true and proper heresy.

Many who are otherwise sympathetic to the emeritus pope still write us that he abandoned us to our fate – and given the current situation, that reproach may be valid. But the incessant prayers of a silent monk are more powerful and do much more than a great deal of farcical activity. We must always remember that and pray more, seeking the recollection and contemplation of silence.


To mark the anniversary today, RAI-TV is re-broadcasting a one-hour documentary produced as a tribute to Benedict XVI when he turned 90 last year.

The program may be watched here:
www.raistoria.rai.it/articoli/benedetto-xvi-un-rivoluzionario-incompreso/36908/defa...



Scenron's LA VIGNA DEL SIGNORE continues its annual observance of a day of prayer for and with Benedict XVI on the February 11th anniversary:





[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/02/2018 14:35]
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