Pope Francis has remembered his predecessor as a noble, gentle person, as Catholics worldwide mourn the loss of the former Pope Benedict XVI
Former Pope Benedict, the first pontiff in 600 years to resign and a standard bearer for conservatives who yearned for a more traditional Church has died, ending an extraordinary period in which two men wearing white lived in the Vatican.
Benedict, 95, died on Saturday in a former monastery where he had lived since his shock resignation in 2013.
In his first comment in public after the death, Pope Francis said the Church and the world had lost a noble, gentle person.
Bells tolled in Rome as news of his death, which followed a rapid decline in his health over Christmas, spread to the faithful on an unusually warm winter’s day. Many went to pray in St Peter’s Square on hearing the news.
“Now we will only have one pope. I must say that Pope Ratzinger was a charismatic pope, humble but above all a great theologian,” said French tourist Emilie Gaillard, using Benedict’s family name.
The Vatican said his body would lie in state from Monday in St Peter’s Basilica and that Pope Francis will preside at his funeral on Thursday morning in the same square where Benedict, who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said the funeral Mass for his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, in 2005.
“With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said.
“Following the desire of the Pope Emeritus, the funeral will take place in a sign of simplicity,” Bruni said, adding that the service would be “solemn and sober”.
The Vatican has painstakingly elaborate rituals for what happens after a reigning pope dies but no publicly known ones for a former pope – one of the many complications created by Benedict’s resignation.
