To February 27, 2013...
Thank you to Vatican Radio for not spoiling their initial reports of this farewell with superfluous effusions...
An Italian sign that says 'BENEDICT XVI - Pope again!' is a counterpart to the 'RE-ELECT RATZINGER' stickers -
and for all their whimsy, I find these the most touching signs of affection and attachment for the Pope.
ALWAYS AND EVER - THE POPE OF JOY AND LOVE
Benedict XVI's
farewell to the world
February 27, 2013
Pope Benedict XVI held the final General Audience of his pontificate on Wednesday in St Peter's Square.
Here is Vatican Radio's English translation of the Holy Father's remarks:
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood!
Distinguished Authorities!
Dear brothers and sisters!
Thank you for coming in such large numbers to this last General Audience of my pontificate.
Like the Apostle Paul in the biblical text that we have heard, I feel in my heart the paramount duty to thank God, who guides the Church and makes her grow, who sows His Word and thus nourishes the faith in His people.
At this moment my spirit reaches out to embrace the whole Church throughout the world, and I thank God for the “news” that in these years of Petrine ministry I have been able to receive regarding faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity that circulates in the body of the Church – charity that makes the Church to live in love – and of the hope that opens for us the way towards the fullness of life, and directs us towards the heavenly homeland.
I feel I ought to carry everyone in prayer, in a present that is God’s, where I recall every meeting, every voyage, every pastoral visit. I gather everyone and everything in prayerful recollection, in order to entrust them to the Lord: in order that we might have full knowledge of His will, with every wisdom and spiritual understanding, and in order that we might comport ourselves in a manner that is worthy of Him, of His, bearing fruit in every good work (cf. Col 1:9-10).
At this time, I have within myself great trust [in God], because I know – all of us know – that the Gospel’s word of truth is the strength of the Church: it is her life. The Gospel purifies and renews: it bears fruit wherever the community of believers hears and welcomes the grace of God in truth and lives in charity. This is my faith, this is my joy.
When, almost eight years ago, on April 19th, [2005], I agreed to take on the Petrine ministry, I held steadfast in this certainty, which has always accompanied me.
At that moment, as I have already stated several times, the words that resounded in my heart were: “Lord, what do you ask of me? It is a great weight that You place on my shoulders, but, if You ask me, at your word I will throw out the nets, sure that you will guide me” – and the Lord really has guided me. He has been close to me: daily I could feel His presence.
[These years] have been a stretch of the Church’s pilgrim way, which has seen moments joy and light, but also difficult moments. I have felt like St. Peter with the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee: the Lord has given us many days of sunshine and gentle breeze, days in which the catch has been abundant; [then] there have been times when the seas were rough and the wind against us, as in the whole history of the Church it has ever been - and the Lord seemed to be asleep.
Nevertheless, I always knew that the Lord is in the barque, that the barque of the Church is not mine, not ours, but His - and He shall not let her sink. It is He, who steers her: to be sure, he does so also through men of His choosing, for He desired that it be so. This was and is a certainty that nothing can tarnish. It is for this reason, that today my heart is filled with gratitude to God, for never did He leave me or the Church without His consolation, His light, His love.
We are in the Year of Faith, which I desired in order to strengthen our own faith in God in a context that seems to push faith more and more toward the margins of life.
I would like to invite everyone to renew their firm trust in the Lord. I would like that we all entrust ourselves as children to the arms of God, and rest assured that those arms support us, even in times of struggle.
I would like everyone to feel loved by the God who gave His Son for us and showed us His boundless love. I want everyone to feel the joy of being Christian.
A beautiful prayer to be recited daily in the morning says, “I adore you, my God, I love you with all my heart. I thank You for having created me, for having made me a Christian.”
Yes, we are happy for the gift of faith: it is the most precious good that no one can take from us! Let us thank God for this every day, with prayer and with a consistent Christian life. God loves us, but He also expects that we love Him!
At this time, however, it is not only God, whom I desire to thank. A Pope is not alone in guiding St. Peter’s barque, even if it is his first responsibility – and I have not ever felt myself alone in bearing either the joys or the weight of the Petrine ministry. The Lord has placed next to me many people, who, with generosity and love for God and the Church, have helped me and been close to me.
First of all you, dear Brother Cardinals: your wisdom, your counsel, your friendship, were all precious to me. My collaborators, starting with my Secretary of State, who accompanied me faithfully over the years, the Secretariat of State and the whole Roman Curia, as well as all those who, in various areas, give their service to the Holy See: the many faces which never emerge, but remain in the background, in silence, in their daily commitment, with a spirit of faith and humility. They have been for me a sure and reliable support.
A special thought [goes] to the Church of Rome, my diocese!
I cannot forget my Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood,
the consecrated persons and the entire People of God: in pastoral visits, in public encounters, at Audiences, in traveling, I have always received great care and deep affection.
I have loved each and every one, without exception, with that pastoral charity which is the heart of every shepherd, especially the Bishop of Rome, the Successor of the Apostle Peter. Every day I carried each of you in my prayers, with a father's heart. I wish my greetings and my thanks to reach everyone: the heart of a Pope expands to [embrace] the whole world.
I would like to express my gratitude to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, which makes present the great family of nations.
Here I also think of all those who work for good communications, whom I thank for their important service.
At this point I would like to offer heartfelt thanks to all the many people throughout the whole world who in recent weeks have sent me moving tokens of concern, friendship and prayer.
Yes, the Pope is never alone: now I experience this [truth] again in a way so great as to touch my very heart. The Pope belongs to everyone, and so many people feel very close to him.
It’s true that I receive letters from the world's greatest figures - from Heads of State, religious leaders, representatives of the world of culture and so on. I also receive many letters from ordinary people who write to me simply from their heart and let me feel their affection, which is born of our being together in Christ Jesus, in the Church.
These people do not write me as one might write, for example, to a prince or a great figure one does not know. They write as brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, with the sense of very affectionate family ties.
Here, one can touch what the Church is – not an organization, not an association for religious or humanitarian purposes, but a living body, a community of brothers and sisters in the Body of Jesus Christ, who unites us all.
To experience the Church in this way and almost be able to touch with one’s hands the power of His truth and His love, is a source of joy, in a time in which many speak of its decline.
In recent months, I felt that my strength had decreased, and I asked God with insistence in prayer to enlighten me with His light to make me take the right decision – not for my sake, but for the good of the Church.
I have taken this step in full awareness of its severity and also its novelty, but with a deep peace of mind. Loving the Church also means having the courage to make difficult, trying choices, having ever before oneself the good of the Church and not one’s own.
Here allow me to return once again to April 19, 2005. The gravity of the decision was precisely in the fact that from that moment on I was committed always and forever by the Lord. Always!
He who assumes the Petrine ministry no longer has any privacy. He belongs always and totally to everyone, to the whole Church. His life is, so to speak, totally deprived of the private sphere.
I have felt, and I feel even in this very moment, that one receives one’s life precisely when he offers it as a gift. I said before that many people who love the Lord also love the Successor of Saint Peter and are fond of him, that the Pope truly has brothers and sisters, sons and daughters all over the world, and that he feels safe in the embrace of their communion, because he no longer belongs to himself, but he belongs to all and all are truly his own.
The “always” is also a “forever” - there is no returning to private life. My decision to forgo the exercise of active ministry does not revoke this. I do not return to private life, to a life of travel, meetings, receptions, conferences and so on.
I do not abandon the cross, but remain in a new way near to the Crucified Lord. I no longer wield the power of the office for the government of the Church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, within St. Peter’s bounds.
St. Benedict, whose name I bear as Pope, shall be a great example in this for me. He showed us the way to a life which, active or passive, belongs wholly to the work of God.
I thank each and every one of you for the respect and understanding with which you have welcomed this important decision. I continue to accompany the Church on her way through prayer and reflection, with the dedication to the Lord and to His Bride, which I have hitherto tried to live daily and that I would live forever.
I ask you to remember me before God, and above all to pray for the Cardinals, who are called to so important a task, and for the new Successor of Peter, that the Lord might accompany him with the light and the power of His Spirit.
Let us invoke the maternal intercession of Mary, Mother of God and of the Church, that she might accompany each of us and the whole ecclesial community: to her we entrust ourselves, with deep trust.
Dear friends! God guides His Church, maintains her always, and especially in difficult times. Let us never lose this vision of faith, which is the only true vision of the way of the Church and the world.
In our heart, in the heart of each of you, let there be always the joyous certainty that the Lord is near, that He does not abandon us, that He is near to us and that He surrounds us with His love. Thank you!
Rereading this today was almost unbearably poignant. Doubly so. because this was the first and only time a Pope has been able to express his gratitude and love for everyone after serving his 'term' as the Successor of Peter. The Popes who die in office do not have a chance to do so, and the few Popes who left their office alive before Benedict XVI were either sent to exile or deprived of the office in terrible circumstances.
One cannot ever take for granted the unique historicity of Benedict XVI's self-abnegation. After the Passion and Death of Christ, the God-man, it is probably the greatest Lenten sacrifice a human being could make.
Benedict XVI was a true revolutionary and hero of humility, but also modern martyr and saint, and most likely, a future Doctor of the Church. How can we not be thankful, even after all the heartache of his renunciation, and the scourge we must bear because of how he is still misrepresented and even calumniated! God grant him more years of joy and healthful repose at the foot of the Cross where he has chosen to spend the last stage of his earthly pilgrimage.
Pope recalls joy and difficulties
at his final general audience
By NICOLE WINFIELD
VATICAN CITY, February 27, 2013 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI basked in an emotional send-off Wednesday from an estimated 150,000 people at his final general audience in St. Peter's Square, recalling moments of "joy and light" during his papacy and also times of difficulty when "it seemed like the Lord was sleeping."
The crowd, many toting banners saying "Grazie!" ("Thank you!"), jammed the piazza to bid Benedict farewell and hear his final speech as Pontiff. In this appointment, which he has kept each week for eight years to teach the world about the Catholic faith, Benedict thanked his flock for respecting his retirement, which takes effect Thursday.
Benedict clearly enjoyed the occasion, taking a long victory lap around the square in an open-sided car and stopping to kiss and bless half a dozen children handed to him by his secretary. Seventy cardinals, some tearful, sat in solemn attendance — then gave him a standing ovation at the end of his speech.
Benedict made a quick exit, foregoing the typical meet-and-greet session that follows the audience as if to not prolong the goodbye.
Given the historic moment, Benedict also changed course and didn't produce his typical professorial Wednesday catechism lesson. Rather, he made his final public appearance in St. Peter's a personal one, explaining once again why he was becoming the first Pope in 600 years to resign and urging the faithful to pray for his successor.
"To love the church means also to have the courage to take difficult, painful decisions, always keeping the good of the Church in mind, not oneself," Benedict said to thundering applause.
He noted that a Pope has no privacy: "He belongs always and forever to everyone, to the whole church." But he promised that in retirement he would not be returning to private life — instead taking on a new experience of service to the church through prayer.
He recalled that when he was elected Pope on April 19, 2005, he questioned if God truly wanted it.
"'It's a great burden that you've placed on my shoulders,'" he recalled telling God.
During his eight years as Pope, Benedict said he had had "moments of joy and light, but also moments that haven't been easy ... moments of turbulent seas and rough winds, as has occurred in the history of the church when it seemed like the Lord was sleeping."
But he said he never felt alone, that God always guided him, and he thanked his cardinals and colleagues for their support and for "understanding and respecting this important decision."
The Pope's eight-year tenure has been beset by the clerical sex abuse scandal, discord over everything from priestly celibacy to women's ordination, and most recently, the betrayal by his own butler who stole his private papers and leaked them to a journalist.
Under a bright sun and blue skies, the square was overflowing with pilgrims and curiosity-seekers. Those who couldn't get in picked spots along the main boulevard leading to the square to watch the event on giant TV screens. About 50,000 tickets were requested for Benedict's final master class. In the end, the Vatican estimated that 150,000 people flocked to the farewell.
"It's difficult — the emotion is so big," said Jan Marie, a 53-year-old Roman in his first years as a seminarian. "We came to support the Pope's decision."
With chants of "Benedetto!" erupting often, the mood was far more buoyant than during the Pope's final Sunday blessing. It recalled the jubilant turnouts that often accompanied him at World Youth Days and events involving his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.
Benedict has said he decided to retire after realizing that, at 85, he simply didn't have the "strength of mind or body" to carry on.
"I have taken this step with the full understanding of the seriousness and also novelty of the decision, but with a profound serenity in my soul," Benedict told the crowd.
Benedict will meet Thursday morning with cardinals for a final time, then fly by helicopter to the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo south of Rome.
There, at 8 p.m., the doors of the palazzo will close and the Swiss Guards in attendance will go off duty, their service protecting the head of the Catholic Church over — for now.
Many of the cardinals who will choose Benedict's successor were in St. Peter's Square for his final audience. Those included retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, the object of a grass-roots campaign in the U.S. to persuade him to recuse himself for having covered up for sexually abusive priests. Mahony has said he will be among the 115 cardinals voting on who the next Pope should be.
"God bless you," Mahony said when asked by television crews about the campaign.
Also in attendance Wednesday were cardinals over 80, who can't participate in the conclave but will participate in meetings next week to discuss the problems facing the Church and the qualities needed in a new Pope.
"I am joining the entire Church in praying that the cardinal electors will have the help of the Holy Spirit," Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, 82, said.
Herranz has been authorized by the Pope to brief voting-age cardinals on his investigation into the leaks of papal documents that exposed corruption in the Vatican administration.
Vatican officials say cardinals will begin meeting Monday to decide when to set the date for the conclave.
But the rank-and-file faithful in the crowd weren't so concerned with the future; they wanted to savor the final moments with the Pope they have known for years.
"I came to thank him for the testimony that he has given the Church," said Maria Cristina Chiarini, a 52-year-old homemaker who traveled by train from Lugo in central Italy with about 60 members of her parish. "There's nostalgia, human nostalgia, but also comfort, because as a Christian we have hope. The Lord won't leave us without a guide."
Pope speaks of 'rough seas'
[but also of joy and light]
of papacy at emotional farewell
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY, February 27 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict bid an emotional farewell at his last general audience on Wednesday, acknowledging the "rough seas" that marked his papacy "when it seemed that the Lord was sleeping."
In an unusually public outpouring for such a private man, he alluded to some of the most difficult times of his papacy, which was
dogged by sex abuse scandals, leaks of his private papers and reports of infighting among his closest aides.
[The only issue that 'dogged' this Pontificate was the problem of perverted priests and the bishops who covered for them - with almost 100 percent of the cases reported having taken place before Benedict XVI became Pope. An issue media gloatingly revived at the slightest pretext, hardly reporting at all on what this Pope has done about fighting this evil and seeking to purify the Church of it. Vatileaks was a yearlong media itch at its worst, dating from the last days of January 2012 to some time in September when the confessed thief of the Pope's papers was sentenced. JOSEPH RATZINGER/BENEDICT XVI WAS NOT PERSONALLY TO BLAME OR EVEN RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ONE OF THE THREE ITEMS PULELLA LISTS= and that is what media and the public opinion they shape have almost completely ignored. ]
"Thank you, I am very moved," Benedict told a cheering crowd of more than 150,000 people in St Peter's Square a day before he becomes the first pope to step down in some six centuries.
He said he had great trust in the Church's future, that his abdication was for the good of the Church and asked for prayers for cardinals choosing his successor at a time of crisis.
The Vatican said the address, repeatedly interrupted by applause and cries of "Benedict, Benedict" - was the last by the Pope, who as of Thursday evening will have the title "pope emeritus."
"There were moments of joy and light but also moments that were not easy ... there were moments, as there were throughout the history of the Church, when the seas were rough and the wind blew against us and it seemed that the Lord was sleeping," he said.
When he finished the crowd, which spilled over into surrounding streets and included many of the red-hatted cardinals who will elect his successor in a closed doors conclave next month, stood to applaud.
"I took this step in the full knowledge of its gravity and rarity but with a profound serenity of spirit," he said, as people in the crowd wave supportive banners and national flags.
Loving the Church meant, "having the courage to take difficult and anguished choices, always having in mind the good of the church and not oneself," he said.
The Pope says he is too old and weak to continue leading a Church beset by crises over child abuse by priests and a leak of confidential Vatican documents showing corruption and rivalry among Vatican officials
[THAT HAS EXISTED SEMPITERNALLY IN THE VATICAN, NOT JUST UNDER BENEDICT XVI.]
He said he was not "coming down from the cross" but would serve the Church through prayer.
Some of those who have faulted Benedict for resigning have pointed to the late Pope John Paul, who said he would "not come down from the cross" despite his bad health because he believed his suffering could inspire others.
[And it has. Enough to be a lasting reminder that the world does not need to see re-created over and over.]
Many Catholics and even some close papal aides were stunned by his decision on February 11 and concerned about the impact it will have on a Church torn by divisions.
[What 'impact'? Popes come and go because they are mortal, and the Church has gone on. Even as a committed and unregenerate Bennadict, I refuse to turn this development into unwarranted melodrama. He did the right thing for the right reasons. PUNTO E BASTA! My reasons for grieving this development are entirely selfish = I want it to be as it has been for me since April 19, 2005, but God has decided otherwise. Fiat voluntas sua!]
Most in the square were supportive of Benedict, an increasingly frail figure in the last months of his papacy.
"He did what he had to do in his conscience before God," said Sister Carmel, from a city north of Rome, who came to the capital with her fellow nuns and members of her parish.
"This is a day in which we are called to trust in the Lord, a day of hope," she said. "There is no room for sadness here today. We have to pray, there are many problems in the Church but we have to trust in the Lord."
Not everyone agreed.
"He was a disaster. It's good for everyone that he resigned," said Peter McNamara, 61, an Australian of Irish descent who said he had come to the square "to witness history".
The Pope, a theologian and professor, never felt truly comfortable with the weight of the papacy and
many Catholics feel that, although he was a towering Church figure, perhaps the cardinals should have chosen someone else in 2005.
"It was clear from the start that he was more at home in a library," [What a meaningless statement! As though anyone of us has ever seen him in a library, and after almost eight years of seeing him 'be Pope' in the most endearing ways possible!] , said Carla Manton, 65. "A very good man but he realized in his heart that this was the right thing to do for himself and the Church and now he will pray, he will pray for all of us."
Benedict will move to the papal summer residence south of Rome on Thursday night and later to a convent in the Vatican.
He will lay aside the red "shoes of the fisherman" that have been part of his papal attire and wear brown loafers given to him by shoemakers during a trip to Leon, Mexico last year. He will wear a "simple white cassock", the Vatican said.
[What's this thing about the loafers - you'd think he was going to wear nothing but that the rest of his life!]
His lead seal and his ring of office, known as the "ring of the fisherman", will be destroyed according to Church rules, just as if he had died.
The Vatican said on Tuesday that the Pope was sifting through documents to see which will remain in the Vatican and go into the archives of his papacy and which "are of a personal nature and he will take to his new residence".
Among the documents left for the next Pope will be a confidential report by three cardinals into the "Vatileaks" affair last year when Benedict's former butler
revealed private papers showing corruption and in-fighting inside the Vatican. [Yeah, right! It was the first time in 200 years of Church history that anyone had ever heard of 'corruption and infighting in the Vatican'! This odious obsession to pin everything bad about the Church and the Vatican on Benedict XVI - as if all the Popes before him had been flawless and had led perfect Pontificates - is truly pathologic. And all because they are unable to pin anything specifically grave, much less criminal, on Benedict XVI.]
The new Pope will inherit a Church marked by Vatileaks and child abuse scandals involving priests in Europe and the United States, both of which may have weighed on Benedict's decision. {He will also inherit everything Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI did to cleanse the Church of the essential faults and errors embodied in those 'headline' cases that MSM have equated to be the miserable sum total of a literally luminous Pontificate.]
On Thursday, he will greet cardinals in Rome. That afternoon he will fly by helicopter to the papal summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo, a 15-minute journey. In his last appearance as Pope, he will greet residents and well-wishers in a small square.
At 8 p.m. the Swiss Guards who stand as sentries at the residence will march off in a sign that the papacy is vacant.
Benedict changed Church rules so that cardinals who start pre-conclave meetings on Friday could begin the conclave earlier than the 15 days after the papacy becomes vacant prescribed by the previous law.
The Vatican appears to be aiming to have a new Pope elected by mid-March and installed before Palm Sunday on March 24 so he can preside at Holy Week services leading to Easter.
Cardinals have begun informal consultations by phone and email in the past two weeks since Benedict said he was quitting.
A loving hymn to Benedict XVI from Paul Badde... I originally translated the quotation he used - "Too pure, too innocent, too holy" - from an Italian carabinieri who exclaimed it as Benedict XVI passed by in his Popemobile, as Badde had translated it in German, with the adverb 'too' (zu) for the Italian troppo, which can mean 'too' or 'very' or 'so' (to imply measure), but in the context in which it was used, I think the right adverb is "so'...
Benedict XVI's last General Audience:
'So pure, so innocent, so holy'
by Paul Badde
Translated from
February 27, 2013
The 348th General Audience of Benedict XVI was his last, and not everything was as before. More than five million people have come to these General Audiences in the past eight years in St. Peter's Square or in the Aula Paolo VI.
Today, it seemed as if another million had travelled here to stand head to head at his last public event to bid farewell to him. Only at his funeral
[God keep him many more years!] will we see him once more in public... But at this General Audience, death was quite remote.
The Piazza vibrated with life. People crowded forward from all the side streets. Flags and banners from all the continents fluttered over the crowd. The universal Church was taking leave of her Pope although he had not died. A helicopter whirred overhead in a cloudless sky. Low-flying gulls cast shadows on the marble facades in St. Peter's Square.
It was a popular feast of faith on this bright and early spring day in February. It did not need much imagination to evoke the voice of Cardinal Ratzinger saying in this same square, at the funeral Mass for his predecessor on April 8, 2005: "Now John Paul II is standing at the window of the Father's house looking down and blessing us".
Eleven days later, on April 19, 2005, Joseph Ratzinger himself became Pope, and once more, five days later, he said in this Square at the Mass that began his Petrine ministry: "Yes, the Church is alive - that is the wonderful experience of these days. The Church is alive. And she is young. She carries the future of the world in her and shows every person the way to the future".
Now, as that ministry ends, he takes up the same theme spontaneously and proclaims to the crowd that had come to bid farewell to him, "See how the Church is alive!"
Rome seemed full as at the canonization of Padre Pio. Beyond St. Peter's Square, the faithful filled the width of the Via della Conciliazione to the Tiber, as overhead TV cameras showed on the giant TV screens, which magnified for them the serene face of their little Pope.
The Italians in particularly paid homage one last time to this man who had become for many of them their 'Papa angelicus'. He is the 'Pope of love', said a fisherman from Ladispoli, and a few meters away, a greying commandant of the Carabinieri wiped tears from his eyes, as he watched the slightly stooped old man in white pass through the passages among the crowd - his left hand firmly gripping a support rail, his right hand raised to bless them.
"Troppo puro, troppo innocente, troppo santo" (Too pure, too innocent, too holy), the old policeman cried out.
Anticipating the passage of the Popemobile, people in the sectors stood on their chairs - men and women, young and old, priests and laymen, the faithful from all continents. It was an overwhelming jubilation that they had reserved for the Pope.
A young Italian woman told me, "I learned to love the Germans because of the Pope".
The trip around the Square and back to the steps of St. Peter's took almost half an hour until Pope Benedict XVI began the audience by intoning the Sign of the Cross in Latin.
On this day, his spirit reaches out to embrace the whole Church, he said. Once more he had chosen a Gospel passage - from the letter of St. Paul to the Colossians - to set the theme of the day, and one last time, he was Peter, his predecessor from Galilee.
He knew, he said, that the boat which he had steered, was not his but the Lord's. And so it is with the Church, which does not belong to the Pope or to the people but to God alone. "The Church is his boat" and Christ is always on board.
Today he uses the Gospel text to lead into a singular expression of gratitude to God, to his co-workers, to the cardinals, to the ambassadors who represented here the peoples of the earth, and finally, to the whole Church, whose strength is "the word of Truth in the Gospel".
And he thanks everyone once more for accepting and respecting his difficult decision, and assured them that just as eight years ago, he had given up his private life totally for his last service to the Church as the Successor of Peter, so now, he was not returning to private life as he now dedicates himself to prayer for the Church.
And one last time, he delivers greetings in various languages, even in Arabic, and of course, in Polish (that he had learned in his old age in order to be able to speak directly to his predecessor's countrymen). He thanked a brass band from Traunstein for playing a Bavarian hymn.
"It is beautiful to be Christian!" he said.
Then, he arose and led the 'Our Father' in Latin as he always does at the end of the audiences. A small man in white, with folded hands and a quiver in his voice. The image will live on.
Fr. Lombardi gave a news briefing that I have not seen reported in the Anglophone reports I've gone through. Not even on the English service of Vatican Radio itself. Yet it's part of the penultimate day of a Pontificate that is already historic in many more ways than just the first voluntary renunciation of the Papacy.
'A wonderful day - Benedict serene,
having made his decision before God'
Translated from the Italian service of
February 27, 2013
"An atmosphere of great emotion and serenity - and the Pope had the most beautiful look," Fr. Federico Lombardi said during a briefing in early afternoon at the Vatican Press Room.
After the General Audience in St. Peter's Square, he said, Benedict XVI met at the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace with a few dignitaries who had come to bid him farewell.
They included the President of Slovakia, Ivan Gasparovic; the minister president of Bavaria, Horst Seehofer; the mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno; and the captains regent of the Republic of San Marino, Teodoro Lonferini and Denis Brunzetti.
Fr. Lombardi said it had been 'a wonderful day', and he called the sunny day 'a great gift' to mark Benedict XVI's last general audience.
"I do not know if you noticed, through the TV monitors, the final shots of the audience by CTV which showed the Pope with a most beautiful look on his face, extremely serene and smiling".
He said the same serenity marked the small reception (baciamano) that followed at the Sala Clementina: "The serenity of having done the good work and of having taken his decision before God and in total agreement with God's will for him".
Fr. Lombardi also wanted to highlight certain passages of the Pope's farewell catechesis, especially that about faith as "the only true vision for the way of the Church and the world", and his words on the work of God, in a reference to St. Benedict's 'ora et lavora' principle (pray and work).
"The work of God - opus Dei - is that which (Benedict XVI) has sought to do and will continue to do. A life which, whether active or passive, is devoted totally to the work of God. And so his work is to serve the work of God".
Tomorrow morning, cardinals already in Rome will meet the Pope at the Sala Clementina after a greeting by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals.
At 5 p.m., Benedict XVI leaves the Vatican for the last time as Pope to go to Castel Gandolfo where he will spend the next two months until he can return to the Vatican monastery where he will live "hidden from the world".
In Castel Gandolfo, he will greet the townspeople a last time as Pope from the balcony of the Apostolic Palace that overlooks the city square. [Also the last words the public will hear from him as Pope.] Less than three hours later, he will no longer be Pope, and the sede vacante begins.
Fr. Lombardi, answering assorted questions, said the chimney for the stove on which the Conclave ballots will be burned has not yet been installed in the Sistine Chapel.
About the date for the Conclave, he said: "On March 1 (Friday), the Dean of Cardinals will convoke the general congregations of the cardinals. Very likely then, this first meeting itself will take place on Monday, March 4. The cardinals will set the date for when the Conclave begins. So we will not know until some time next week."
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/02/2015 11:34]