Benedict XVI is dead: the will he left, with a “heartfelt forgiveness” and a request to the Church

The Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, passed away this Saturday at the age of 95, left a spiritual testament in which he asks “forgiveness from the heart“ to which he may have done harm in his life and to which he has called the Church “stay put” in faith in the face of the philosophical and scientific proposals that try to counter it.

“To all those I have harmed in any way, I sincerely apologize”reads the document, entitled “My spiritual testament” and published by the Holy See, in German and Italian.

Benedict XVI, whose funeral chapel will begin on Monday and his funeral on Thursday, begins this posthumous document by thanking God for guiding him through “various moments of confusion.”

“First of all, I thank God himself, dispenser of all good things, who gave me life and guided me in the various moments of loss, lifting me up every time I began to slip, always giving me the light of his face again”. he has written.

He also thanked his parents who gave his life “at a difficult time” in interwar Germany in 1927, when the country was heading towards Nazism, and his siblings, Maria and Georg.

Moreover, he expressed his own thanks to the “many friends, men and women” who accompanied him throughout his life and the teachers and pupils he had, as well as his homeland, Germany, and his native Bavaria, where, he said, he always saw “appear the splendor of the Creator”.

In fact, he addresses the German people directly: “I pray that our land continues to be of faith and I ask you, dear compatriots: do not let yourselves be distracted from the faith”.

“What I said to my compatriots, I say now to those in the Church who have been entrusted to my service: remain firm in the faith!Don’t be confused!”to encourage.

In this sense, Benedict XVI has written an appeal in defense of the faith against the philosophical and supposed scientific interpretations who seek to appease it or minimize its importance.

“It often seems that science – the natural sciences on the one hand and historical research (in particular the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures) on the other – are capable of offering unequivocal results in the face of the Catholic faith”, he begins.

But he adds: “I have seen the transformations of the natural sciences from distant times and I was able to verify how, on the contrary, the apparent certainties against faith have vanished, proving to be, not science, but philosophical interpretations only apparently related to science”.

Faith, Ratzinger points out, has dialogued with natural science and has also “learned” from it to better understand “the limit of the dimension of its affirmations”.

In his sixty years as a theologian, Ratzinger states that “he has seen theses that seemed irreducible collapse, demonstrating that they were only hypotheses”.

Among these he cites the liberal generation, with references such as the German Protestants Adolf von Harnack and Adolf Jülicher; the existentialist, such as Rudolf Bultmann; or the Marxist generation.

“I have seen and still see how the reason for faith emerged and emerges from the hubbub of hypotheses. Jesus Christ is truly the way, the truth and the life, and the Church, with all its insufficiencies, is truly his body”. stick up for.

Finally, Benedict XVI, who retired to a Vatican convent until his death after his historic resignation in 2013, “humbly” asks to pray for him.

“For the Lord, in spite of all my sins and shortcomings, to welcome me into his eternal abode. To all those whom he has entrusted to me, day by day, my prayer goes from the heart ”, he concludes.

Source: EFE