Pope Benedict died peacefully on New year’s Eve at 9.30am. at the age of 95.  His secretary Archbishop Gaenswein said that his last words were ‘Lord, I love you’.

Archbishop John wrote the following

‘It is with great sadness that we received the news that the Pope Benedict XVI has finished his earthly pilgrimage and returned to the Father, to the place prepared for him by Christ, the Lord he served faithfully through this life and ministry.

We are profoundly grateful for his remarkable example of faith and discipleship, and his witness of service to the Church, both in his home country and to the Church Universal. He was gifted uniquely as a preacher and teacher of the Catholic faith. His intellectual legacy of writing is part of the Church’s treasury for the future.   

We thank God for his gentleness as a humble worker in the Lord’s vineyard; and for his willingness to address pressing issues in the Church. We now accompany him with our prayers that he may know eternal joy and peace.”

Pope Benedict’s Personal Spiritual Testament

“When, at this late hour of my life, I look back on the decades I have wandered through, I see first of all how much reason I have to give thanks. Above all, I thank God Himself, the giver of all good gifts, who has given me life and guided me through all kinds of confusion; who has always picked me up when I began to slip, who has always given me anew the light of his countenance. In retrospect, I see and understand that even the dark and arduous stretches of this path were for my salvation and that He guided me well in those very stretches. 

I thank my parents, who gave me life in difficult times and prepared a wonderful home for me with their love, which shines through all my days as a bright light until today. My father’s clear-sighted faith taught us brothers and sisters to believe and stood firm as a guide in the midst of all my scientific knowledge; my mother’s heartfelt piety and great kindness remain a legacy for which I cannot thank her enough. My sister has served me selflessly and full of kind concern for decades; my brother has always paved the way for me with the clear-sightedness of his judgements, with his powerful determination, and with the cheerfulness of his heart; without this ever-new going ahead and going along, I would not have been able to find the right path. 

I thank God from the bottom of my heart for the many friends, men and women, whom He has always placed at my side; for the co-workers at all stages of my path; for the teachers and students He has given me. I gratefully entrust them all to His goodness. And I would like to thank the Lord for my beautiful home in the Bavarian foothills of the Alps, in which I was able to see the splendour of the Creator Himself shining through time and again. I thank the people of my homeland for allowing me to experience the beauty of faith time and again. I pray that our country will remain a country of faith and I ask you, dear compatriots, not to let your faith be distracted. Finally, I thank God for all the beauty I was able to experience during the various stages of my journey, but especially in Rome and in Italy, which has become my second home.I ask for forgiveness from the bottom of my heart from all those whom I have wronged in some way. 

Finally, I humbly ask: pray for me, so that the Lord may admit me to the eternal dwellings, despite all my sins and shortcomings. To all those who are entrusted to me, day after day, my heartfelt prayer goes out.” 

Benedictus PP XVI