Caroline Baudry
modified to
09:16, January 05, 2023
Catholics around the world will have their eyes on the Vatican. The funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI will begin at 9.30 a.m. sharp in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. 100,000 faithful are expected for the ceremony, some of whom wish to pay homage to the “pope of (their) childhood”.
A last farewell to a pope who will have marked history. The funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI will begin this Thursday at 9:30 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican. Many faithful made the trip for this historic goodbye, nearly 100,000 are expected. Among them, French Catholics like Marie, 23. She came from Paris to pay homage to the “pope of her childhood”, one of the greatest according to the faithful.
A modern pope?
“I really admire the humility of this man. To say ‘actually, I’m not able to take you any further than I’ve already done’, ‘I have the responsibility of a herd’. We often take in the church the image of the pastor with his sheep. ‘It is not me that is important, it is the testimony that I bear to God that is important and I will not be able to do it well. do,'” she recalls.
For Marie, the choice to retire in 2013 was the best he could do. A great theologian, the faithful also praises the work of this pope emeritus: “He is a man who made it possible to structure and anchor in doctrine and in faith what John Paul II had opened and had announced on the Christians”.
“He might seem a little conservative, out of tune with the times, when in fact he was quite a modern pope. He was really going in the direction of Christian unity. And that’s still the more importantly, the unity of Christians”, she concludes at the microphone of Europe 1.