Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI left a spiritual testament in which he asks for “heartfelt forgiveness” of those he has harmed in his life and urges the church to “stand firm” in the faith against ideas that try to combat it.
“To all those who, in any way, I have harmed, I sincerely ask your forgiveness”, reads the document entitled “My spiritual testament”, which was released this Saturday by the Holy See, in German and Italian.
Benedict XVI, who died this Saturday at the age of 95, begins the document by thanking God for having guided him in “several moments of confusion.”
“First of all, I thank God, the dispenser of all good, who gave me life and guided me in various moments of confusion, getting up every time I began to slip, showing me the light of his face over and over again,” he said. he writes
The Pope emeritus also thanks the parents who gave him life “at a difficult time” in Germany in 1927, between the two great wars and when the country was headed towards Nazism, and the brothers Maria and Georg.
Benedict XVI, whose original name is Joseph Ratzinger, also expresses his gratitude to the “many friends, men and women” who accompanied him throughout his life and to the teachers and students he had, as well as to his country and his native Bavaria. where, he says, he always saw “the splendor of the Creator appear”.
Addressing the German people directly, he writes: “I pray that our land remains a land of faith and I ask you, dear compatriots, not to be diverted from the faith.”
“What I said to my compatriots, I say now to all those in the Church who have been entrusted to my service: remain firm in the faith! Do not let yourselves be confused! ”, He encourages.
In this sense, Benedict XVI calls for the defense of the faith against philosophical and supposedly scientific interpretations that seek to appease or minimize it.
“It often seems that science – the natural sciences, on the one hand, and historical research (in particular, the exegesis of Holy Scripture) on the other – are capable of offering unequivocal results in the face of the Catholic faith,” he says. .
But, he adds: “I have seen the transformations of the natural sciences since antiquity and I have been able to verify how, on the contrary, the apparent certainties disappear in the face of faith, demonstrating that it is not about science, but only philosophical interpretations apparently linked To science”.
Faith, Ratzinger points out, has dialogued with the natural sciences and with them has “learned” to understand “better the limit of the dimension of its affirmations”.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who died today at the age of 95, shook the Church by resigning his pontificate for health reasons on February 11, 2013, two months before his eighth year in office.
Joseph Ratzinger, who was Pope between 2005 and 2013, was born in 1927 in Marktl am Inn, in the German diocese of Passau, becoming the first German to head the Catholic Church in many centuries and a representative of the most dogmatic line of the Church. .
The sexual abuse of minors by priests and the “Vatileaks”, in which case confidential papal documents were revealed, were issues that stirred his pontificate.
Benedict XVI called the abuses a “heinous crime” and apologized to the victims.
The funeral of Benedict XVI will take place on Thursday, in Saint Peter’s Square, in the Vatican, at 9:30 a.m. local time (8:30 a.m. in Lisbon), in a celebration presided over by Pope Francis.
Source: TSF
