Pope thanks curia for helping ‘carry burden’ of papacy

    At the end of their weeklong Lenten retreat, Pope Benedict XVI thanked members of the Roman Curia “for these eight years during which you have helped me carry the burden of the Petrine ministry with great competence, affection, love and faith.”
    During the retreat Feb. 17-23, the pope and members of the curia spent hours each morning and evening praying in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the Apostolic Palace and listening to 17 meditations offered by Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
    The annual retreat took on a different character this year, beginning just six days after Pope Benedict announced his intention to resign, effective Feb. 28.
    At the end of the retreat, the pope said that while his close collaboration with the curial officials would end, their “spiritual closeness” would remain, as would “a profound communion in prayer.”
    “With this certainty, let us move forward, certain of the victory of God, certain of truth, beauty and love,” he said.
    Cardinal Ravasi had dedicated his talks to the interplay between prayer and belief, looking specifically at what the Psalms say about prayer, about the one praying and about God.
    Pope Benedict said the cardinal’s meditations “and our daily experience” also showed how the beauty of God’s creation “is permanently contradicted in this world by evil, suffering and corruption. It seems almost like the Evil One wants to permanently muddy creation to contradict God and make his truth and beauty unrecognizable.”
    To counter evil, he said, God’s love and beauty must reflect the world’s suffering. God’s son is “crowned with a crown of thorns,” and in that tragic figure of the suffering son, he said, “we begin to see the most profound beauty of our creator and redeemer.”
    “In the silence of the dark night we can listen to his word,” Pope Benedict said. “To believe is nothing other than to touch the hand of God in the dark night and, in silence, listen to the Word and see love.”
    Vatican Radio said Cardinal Ravasi ended the retreat by telling the pope that other members of the curia wanted him to express their affection for the pope and some “told me to ask forgiveness for the ways we were unable to support you in your ministry.”
    The cardinal said it was most appropriate, though, simply “to thank you for your teaching and your ministry.”
    Cardinal Ravasi said the pope’s ministry will continue in a different form, with what the cardinal described as the pope’s “hiding” or withdrawal from public life.
           – VATICAN CITY (CNS)