(Vatican Radio) In this week’s editorial, Fr. Federico Lombardi, sj, reflects on
the witness of Pope Benedict XVI in the final days of his pontificate. Fr. Lombardi
is the director of the Press Office of the Holy See. Read Vatican Radio’s English
translation below.
The final days of the pontificate of Benedict XVI will
certainly remain ingrained in the memory of innumerable people and will mark an important
stage, new and unprecedented, in the history of a pilgrim Church. For many it was
almost a discovery of the Pope’s humanity and spirituality; for others, a confirmation
of his humility, along with his deep life in faith.
If Pope Wojtyla had given,
with admirable courage before the eyes of the world, his courageous witness of faith
in the suffering of sickness, Pope Ratzinger, without lesser courage, gave us the
witness of acceptance before God of the limits of old age and of the discernment on
the exercise of responsibility that God had entrusted to him. Both taught us, not
only with the Magisterium, but also and perhaps even more effectively with their lives,
what it means to seek and to find everyday the will of God for us and for our service,
even in the most crucial situations of human existence.
As he told us effectively
himself, the resignation of a Pope is not in any way abandonment, neither of the mission
received or much less of the faithful. It is the continuation of entrusting to God
his Church, in the secure hope that he continues to guide it. With humility and serenity,
Benedict XVI says he “tried to do” everything possible to serve the good of the Church,
a Church that is not his, God’s and which, by the continued workings of the Spirit,
“lives, grows and awakens souls”.
In this sense, the legacy of Pope Benedict
is today an invitation to all to prayer and responsibility. First, naturally, for
the cardinals to whom falls the task of the election of a successor, but also and
no less for the entire Church, who needs to accompany in prayer the discernment of
the electors and the new Pope in the task of effectively proclaiming the Gospel “for
the good of the Church and of humanity” and to guide the community to an always greater
faithfulness to the same Gospel of Christ. Because no Pope can do this alone. We will
do it therefore also with him, and the Pope Emeritus will continue to accompany us,
“working” for this – these were his final words spoken publicly –“with his heart,
with his love, with his prayer, with his reflection”.