Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI looked refreshed and stood for an hour and a half during a Mass with his former students this week.
Members of the Ratzinger “schuelerkreis” or “student circle” had been meeting at Castel Gandolfo in Italy, and then travelled to the Vatican for a Mass on August 24, with Benedict as principal celebrant.
The schuelerkreis involves former doctoral students of Joseph Ratzinger.
The group has grown in recent years, with a “youth branch” made up of academics, who are studying and developing his theological work.
The Mass was celebrated at the Campo Santo Teutonico chapel in the Vatican, and Benedict gave the homily on the gospel of the day, where Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say I am?”
Irish theologian Fr Vincent Twomey said the homily was very moving. The former Pope preached without reference to notes.
“What struck us all is that despite being older each year,” Benedict XVI “looks much better, fresher. He’s very clear in his mind,” Fr Twomey noted, observing how the former pontiff stood for nearly an hour and a half during the mass even though a chair was provided for him.
The main point of Benedict’s homily, the priest explained, was that “today people are always asking who is Jesus Christ”.
“They say he was a great man, a teacher, a revolutionary perhaps. People outside see him in different ways,” Fr Twomey noted Benedict as saying.
“And that’s not a bad thing; that means that Jesus image has spread throughout society and religions,” he went on.
“But, to recognise him as the Son of God is a gift of faith.”
Noting how “Our Lord didn’t build his Church on a theory or a statement, but on a person, a relationship with Jesus,” Fr Twomey stated that Benedict’s words were “very moving because the Church where we celebrated was near the place where Peter himself gave his final witness”.
“Benedict XVI talked about how the gates of hell would never prevail.
“The Church is always the weak player, always under attack, but the Church always survives because it is not a human, but a divine entity.”
“The cross is the way to the Resurrection. The good news is God’s love triumphs over evil. Evil will never triumph over good,” the priest continued.
Unlike in 2013, neither Vatican Radio nor the Vatican newspaper provided quotes from the homily.
Sources
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