Pope Benedict XVI

I remember well waking up as usual on February 11, 2013, to the sound of NPR's "Morning Edition," set to come on automatically at 6:00 a.m., only to be suddenly startled by the most unexpected and initially most unbelievable of announcements, that Pope Benedict XVI had announced his resignation. In that announcement, he had said that "in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me."

Almost eight years had passed since his unsurprising election as Pope in April 2005. At the time, what had excited me was his chosen name. The previous day, in a conversation about potential papal names, I had suggested that, if I were to be elected Pope, I would take the name Benedict XVI in memory of the under-appreciated Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922). So imagine how happy I was to hear Cardinal Ratzinger's choice of that papal name the next day!

I never met Pope Benedict, but I was present four times for Masses he celebrated - at World Youth Day in Germany in August 2005, at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York in 2008, at the Consistory Mass at Saint Peter's in February 2012 (when I assisted in distributing Holy Communion), and in Saint Peter's Square on October 7, 2012, when he named Hildegard of Bingen and John of Avila Doctors of the Church. After his predecessor's personality-focused papacy, I appreciated his reserved personal style, his emphasis on the office rather than its occupant, and on the liturgy rather than the celebrant.

To me, the combination of Benedict's reserved personality and his theological strength (shared with the world in an especially wonderful way in his three great encyclicals, Deus caritas est, Spe salvi, and Caritas in veritate) seemed at first to be just what the Church needed at that moment in her history. As her fellow-German theological star, Cardinal Walter Kasper, noted, he "left a great heritage to the church as a pope-theologian." Benedict, in Kasper's words, "deepened the doctrine of the [Second Vatican] Council," and "has deepened our faith, our spirituality." 

Born in Bavaria in 1927, Benedict was the last pope to have experienced World War II up close. An influential theologian before, during, and after Vatican II, he was the last pope to have participated personally in that world-historical event. As such, he continued moving the church on the path the Council had begun in addressing some of the lingering challenges from the Church's past, for example, the troubled history of the Church's relationship with the Jewish people. As World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said, commenting on Benedict's death, "No pope before him visited as many synagogues, and he made a point of meeting with local Jewish community representatives whenever he visited foreign nations."

Meanwhile, however, those two great defining events of the 20th century - the wars and the council - have faded into ancient history for most Catholics living today.

That said, preparing for Christmas each year, I often reread his 2012 volume Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives. Likewise, preparing for Easter, I regularly reread his 2011 Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection. He was, as New York's Archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, described him, an "erudite, wise, and holy man, who spoke the truth with love."

Great as those qualities were, however, they apparently proved in the end less than fully sufficient for the moment. His intellectual brilliance and his deeply prayerful traditional faith seemed somehow unable to overcome the organizational and personnel nightmares which plagued his pontificate and which still continue to afflict the Church. Rightly or wrongly, I have always suspected that that was what wore him down so as to lead to his unprecedented abdication. To me at the time it seemed an act of incredible humility to acknowledge one's "incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry" to which one had been called. In retrospect, it also suggests how humanly intractable may be the persistent problems which keep threatening to overwhelm the Church.

Hopefully, history will remember Pope Benedict XVI for more than his resignation and will credit him for his calm, humble, prayerful and supremely serious effort to lead the Church through a period of unprecedented challenges and turmoil.

O God, immortal shepherd of souls, look on your people's prayers and grant that your servant Pope Benedict XVI, who presided over your Church in charity, may with the flock entrusted to his care, receive from your mercy the reward of a faithful steward. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever, Amen.