Catholic believers in Thuringia are also mourning the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who died on New Year’s Eve. In 2011 he visited Thuringia.

Erfurt (dpa/th) – After the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. reminded the Erfurt Diocese and the Thuringian State Chancellery of his visit to Thuringia in September 2011. “He strengthened not only the Catholics, but all Christians in the diaspora of East Germany in their faith,” Erfurt Bishop Ulrich Neymeyr said on Saturday. The State Chancellery published a video of the two-day Pope’s visit with stations in Erfurt and the Catholic Eichsfeld on Twitter.

There Benedict XVI had an open-air mass was celebrated at the Etzelsbach pilgrimage chapel with 90,000 believers, in Erfurt 28,000 believers came to a mass on the cathedral square. Neymeyr reminded that Benedict XVI. paid tribute to the work of Martin Luther during his historic visit to the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt and thanked the Catholics in Eichsfeld for their loyalty to the faith. In Erfurt, the Pope, who voluntarily resigned from his office in 2013, also met with victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (left) expressed his sorrow for the man who died on New Year’s Eve on Twitter: “As the German Pope, he has rendered outstanding services to faith and dialogue between believers of different denominations,” he wrote.

The Catholic Church is losing a great theologian, said Neymeyr according to the announcement. In his teaching activities as a university professor, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and as Pope, he expressed the truth of the Catholic faith in great formulations that were easy to understand. The emeritus pope died in the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in the Vatican on Saturday morning. Born in Bavaria, he was 95 years old.

A funeral service for Benedict will be held in Erfurt’s Marien-Dom on Tuesday, January 3, at 6 p.m. A condolence book is available in the cathedral until January 29, in which mourners can express their condolences. The book of condolences will later be given to the Apostolic Nuncio, the Pope’s ambassador to Germany. Around 140,000 Catholic believers live in the diocese of Erfurt.