Tributes to Pope Benedict

l Truly Good Shepherd

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was a great friend of the Ordo virginum. We remember him with love and thanksgiving. We also pray for him as he himself asked, “Pray for me, so that the Lord, despite all my sins and insufficiencies, welcomes me into the eternal dwelling.”

The Feb. 2, 2023 issue of the Lamp will be devoted in tribute to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and will re-print the text of his address to the Ordo virginum in Rome in 2008.

I thank our Eternal Father for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, his gift to the Church. I thank God for his wisdom and his unwavering faithfulness to the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, the doctrines of the Church and for leading his flock in clarity of the Father’s will.

Pope Benedict was a true light in the darkness. Our heroic and courageous Pope Benedict was “like a bright-ringing bell, a clarion call of truth, in a darkened age.”

With the rest of our universal Church, we mourn the loss of a truly Good Shepherd, but our mourning is tempered with the hope of the Gospel which Pope Benedict preached with such eloquence. I further appreciate his extraordinary intelligence and knowledge coupled with Christ-like meekness and humility. He truly served according to the inspired words of his episcopal motto as one of our Lord’s “fellow workers in the truth (3 Jn 8)

— HELEN QUA, CONSECRATED VIRGIN