For some days now, Benedict XVI has left us. He has withdrawn. By the time you read these words, we will likely have a new shepherd. But why did the Pope Emeritus make such a striking gesture? How much did he meditate before deciding? What led him down this path?
It is difficult indeed for us to interpret this decision, to understand it, to stand with him in it.
Yet we have felt not abandoned, but alone—and we find ourselves trying to imagine alongside him what inner struggle he must have endured in this season: fears, doubts, uncertainties.
With all his heart, he would have wanted to stay with us as shepherd, brother, counselor, friend. Instead, he chose to leave us, to live out the last chapter of his life in silence and prayer, drawing near to us in ways we cannot fathom.
It is for us to interpret why he made this choice.
"We cannot reproach Pope Benedict for anything; he acted by stepping into the fray, pouring his humanity as father and pastor into the suffering of the victims" (Don Fortunato Noto).
He made a courageous gesture—a startling one—in stepping away from the papacy and the Roman Curia. It returns us to the heart of Christian faith itself.
A man who felt his own fragility, too weak to steer the boat through the storm. He knew well that Jesus stands ready to sustain us, but above all to sustain a new helmsman.
Conscious of this accompaniment for the Church, he left us an example: he stripped himself of the power with which he had been invested, which he had accepted with courage and love, so that he might return to being, like us, a simple pilgrim who, trusting in the hand of God, walks toward the Goal.
Mariangela Bertolini, 2013