Diocese offers requiem Mass for Pope Benedict XVI

Bishop Daniel Felton offered a requiem Mass for Pope Benedict XVI at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in Duluth Jan. 5, joining Pope Francis in Rome and dioceses across the world as the retired pope was mourned by the universal church. 

The bishop noted in his homily that the retired pope, who died on New Year’s Eve at the age of 95, had been in service to the church for so long that people knew him in a variety of ways — as a theological expert at the Second Vatican Council, as a cardinal and prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as pope, and as pope emeritus.

Bishop Daniel Felton delivers the homily at a diocesan requiem Mass for Pope Benedict XVI at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in Duluth Jan. 5. The retired pope died Dec. 31. Parishes were also encouraged to honor Benedict XVI in their daily Masses that day. (Deacon Kyle Eller / The Northern Cross)

But he said it was fruitful to think of Benedict XVI in two ways: as a theologian and as a disciple. 

“Pope Benedict will be remembered as having the greatest theological mind of the 20th century,” Bishop Felton said. “He was at his heart and core a teacher, and in so many ways, he was able to use that charism that he had been given in such a special way.” 

That service as a theologian included influencing key documents of Vatican II; dealing with complex issues facing the church as prefect of the CDF; heading the commission for the writing of the Catechism of the Catholic Church; and writing 66 books, three encyclicals, four exhortations and “literally hundreds and hundreds of essays.” 

“Pope Benedict the theologian will be with us for centuries, as we go back to the writings of St. Augustine, as we go back to the writings of the the doctors of the church,” the bishop said. “For centuries we are gong to go back to the writings of Pope Benedict ….” 

But he said to understand the theologian, you had to understand the disciple, the humble and kind man he encountered personally while studying in Rome as a priest in the 1980s. 

Bishop Felton said that of all of Pope Benedict’s writings, the one sentence that struck him the most was: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea but the encounter with a Person, Jesus Christ.” 

“It’s really that one sentence that sums up all of his theology,” the bishop said. “It’s that one sentence that sums up who he was as a person, as a priest, as a cardinal, and as pope.” 

Bishop Felton said that the late pope’s personal witness was dedicated to showing and telling how to have that encounter, and that’s why his whole life was summed up in his dying words: “Jesus, I love you.”