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Not since 1417 has the death of a Pope not brought with it the end of a pontificate.
Even though the conclusion of his reign came before the end of his life, creating a historic precedent of enormous magnitude, it would truly be unbecoming to remember Benedict XVI for this alone.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.
According to the young theologian, the texts “should respond to the most pressing questions and should do so, as far as possible, not judging or condemning, but using maternal language.” Ratzinger favoured the foreseen liturgical reform and the reasons for its providential inevitability. He would say that to retrieve the true nature of the liturgy, it was necessary that the “Latin wall be demolished.
From the loggia of Saint Peter’s Basilica, Benedict XVI presented himself as “a humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord”. Alien to any sort of protagonism, he declared he had no “programmes”, but that he wanted “to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord”.Naturally shy, Benedict did not renounce traveling – his pontificate would be itinerant just as his predecessor’s had been.
He even found the time to write a book on Jesus of Nazareth, one sole work that would be published in three volumes. Among the many decisions he made, those to be most remembered are: theallowing the use of the pre-conciliar Roman Missal, and the institution of the Ordinariate allowing Anglican communities to return to full communion with Rome.