Pope Benedict’s life of ‘failures and also great achievements’ remembered at Munich requiem

Germany will bid farewell to its pope on Thursday when, in a break with protocol, both president Frank Walter Steinmeier and chancellor Olaf Scholz will attend the funeral of pope emeritus Benedict XVI in Rome.

The Bavarian-born pontiff, who died on Saturday aged 95, was given a requiem on Tuesday evening in Munich, where he served for five years until 1982 as Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger.

His Munich successor, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, described the deceased cardinal and pope as a lifelong “seeker of God and passionate theologian”.

In Munich’s Church of Our Lady, Cardinal Marx welcomed political and business leaders, representatives of Germany’s cultural life, “as well as his critics and those who look ambivalently on his life, one with failures that every life has, and also great achievements”.

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A year ago Cardinal Marx presented a 1,900-page report on the archdiocese of Munich-Freising and apologised to almost 500 survivors for the “disaster” of clerical sexual abuse they experienced between 1945 and 2019.

[ Pope Francis praises Benedict’s ‘acute and gentle thought’ on final day of lying in state ]

Four cases were linked to then archbishop Ratzinger, claims the former pope and his legal team strenuously denied. Cardinal Marx declined to criticise his Munich predecessor at the time but said afterwards he had “no reason to doubt” the report’s findings.

At Tuesday’s Munich requiem, he “invited to pray this evening even those who experienced abuse and pain in the church space, and all of those who were gifted by Joseph Ratzinger”.

Leading Thursday’s Episcopal delegation to Rome is Bishop Georg Bätzing, head of the German bishops’ conference. He praised Ratzinger for “giving hope and direction to the church even in difficult times ... for making the voice of the gospel audible, whether it was convenient or not”.

Bishop Bätzing also recalled last year’s Munich abuse report and how the former pope had “asked forgiveness from those affected, yet questions remained unanswered”.

A regional Bavarian court has confirmed that a civil case involving clerical sex abuse case and the former pope will continue, even after his death.

The civil case was filed in Traunstein district court in June 2022 by Andreas Perr, who says he was abused by a priest, identified only as Peter H, who served in the Munich archdiocese before and after the then cardinal Ratzinger left for Rome in 1982.

A spokeswoman for Traunstein court said that, under German law, it was possible for the case to continue once the former pope’s legal heir had been established.

Ahead of his funeral, leading Catholic figures have praised the pope as a great teacher.

Vienna archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schönborn called Joseph Ratzinger “one of the greats” in the history of theology and said he had his books “on a shelf beside St Augustine”.

“We will remember Joseph Ratzinger in the 20th century as we remember John Henry Newman in the 19th century, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure in the 13th century,” he said.

[ The Irish Times view on the death of Pope Benedict ]

In his Wednesday audience, Pope Francis called his predecessor a “great teacher of catechesis” whose “sharp and gentle thinking” led others to encounter Jesus.

As the pope concluded the audience, a man shouted, “Benedetto, santo subito” (“Benedict, sainthood now”).

Expectation is growing over a book by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Benedict’s assistant for many years, to be published in Italian on January 13th.

Many hope the book, Nient’altro che la verità (Nothing but the truth) will give insights into the German pope’s surprise 2013 resignation and answer Benedict’s critics over his approach to clerical child abuse allegations.

The book is also expected to give insights into Gänswein’s seven years serving two popes – until 2020, when he was put on indefinite leave by Pope Francis in 2020 as prefect of the pontifical household.