Augsburg (dpa / lby) – Bishop Bertram Meier of Augsburg responded to the news of the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI with “sadness and dismay”. reacted. “I bow to the immense and precious life’s work,” he wrote on Saturday. According to the bishop about Benedict, he is certain “that the theological arches that he spanned open up a horizon of light that, with a certain time interval, also outshines the shadows that have fallen on his work in recent months”. He is confident that Joseph Ratzinger wrote church history as one of the great theologians on the chair of Peter.
The bishop went on to write: “Joseph Ratzinger’s tailor-made suit was that of the theologian, and he brought this charisma to all stations of his work: as professor for fundamental theology and dogmatics, in the rank of cardinal as archbishop in our metropolitan Munich and Freising as well as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and finally as Pope.” It was certainly challenging and exciting for Joseph Ratzinger to set aside his own profile as an academic theologian and to integrate it into the we of the whole church, which has to bring unity and diversity together.
