Vatican spokesman emphasizes: Pope has not abandoned Church
March 04, 2013
In his weekly editorial, the director of the Holy See Press Office emphasized that “the resignation of a Pope is not in any way abandonment.”
“If Pope Wojtyla had given, with admirable courage before the eyes of the world, his courageous witness of faith in the suffering of sickness, Pope Ratzinger, without lesser courage, gave us the witness of acceptance before God of the limits of old age and of the discernment on the exercise of responsibility that God had entrusted to him,” wrote Father Federico Lombardi, SJ. “Both taught us, not only with the Magisterium, but also and perhaps even more effectively with their lives, what it means to seek and to find every day the will of God for us and for our service, even in the most crucial situations of human existence.”
“The legacy of Pope Benedict is today an invitation to all to prayer and responsibility,” Father Lombardi added. “First, naturally, for the cardinals to whom falls the task of the election of a successor, but also and no less for the entire Church, which needs to accompany in prayer the discernment of the electors and the new Pope in the task of effectively proclaiming the Gospel ‘for the good of the Church and of humanity’ and to guide the community to an always greater faithfulness to the same Gospel of Christ. Because no Pope can do this alone.”
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