Pope Benedict XVI left a brief text prepared for his death, as a “spiritual testament”, which the Vatican Press Office released on the afternoon of the day of his death, in its original version in German and in translation into Italian. The posthumous text of the late pope emeritus has an eminently personal character, and in it he asks Catholics and in particular his Bavarian compatriots to remain “firm in the faith” and not allow themselves to be “diverted” from it. In his last words, the pope emeritus maintains that the Christian faith has survived in contrast to science, many of whose hypotheses have vanished, and to liberal or Marxist currents in the field of theology that have “collapsed.” This is the full text:
my spiritual testament
“If in this last hour of my life I review the decades that I have traveled, first of all I see how many reasons I have to be grateful. I thank God himself above all, giver of all good, who has given me life and has guided me in various moments of confusion, always picking me up whenever I began to slip and always giving me back the light of his face. In retrospect, I see and understand that even the dark and tiring sections of this road were for my salvation and that precisely in them I guided well.
I thank my parents, who gave me life at a difficult time and who, at the cost of great sacrifices, with their love prepared for me a magnificent home that, like a clear light, has illuminated all my days to this day. My father’s lucid faith taught his children to believe, and as an indicator he has always stood firm in the midst of all my scientific achievements; my mother’s deep devotion and great kindness are a legacy I can never thank enough. My sister has helped me for decades selflessly and with loving dedication; my brother, with the lucidity of his judgments, his vigorous resolution and serenity of heart, has always smoothed my path; without his continuous preceding and accompanying me I would not have been able to find the right path.
I sincerely thank God for so many friends, men and women, that he has always placed by my side; for the collaborators in all the stages of my path; for the teachers and students he has given me. I entrust all of them to his goodness. And I want to thank the Lord for my beautiful homeland in the Bavarian Prealps, in which I have always seen the splendor of the Creator himself shine. I thank the people of my homeland because in them I have always been able to experience the beauty of faith again. I pray that our land continues to be a land of faith and please, dear compatriots: do not let yourselves be diverted from the faith. And finally I thank God for all the beauty that I have been able to experience at all stages of my journey, especially in Rome and in Italy, which has become my second homeland.
To all those whom I have wronged in any way, I sincerely apologize.
What I said before to my compatriots, I say now to all those in the Church who have been entrusted to my service: remain firm in the faith! Don’t be confused! It often seems that science – the natural sciences on the one hand and historical research (particularly the exegesis of Holy Scripture) on the other – is in a position to offer irrefutable results in contrast to the Catholic faith. I have lived through the transformations of the natural sciences since ancient times and I have been able to see how, on the contrary, the apparent certainties against faith have vanished, turning out to be not science, but philosophical interpretations only apparently due to science; just as, on the other hand, it is in dialogue with the natural sciences that faith has also learned to better understand the limit of the scope of its affirmations, and therefore its specificity.
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I have been following the path of theology for sixty years, especially the biblical sciences, and with the succession of different generations I have seen theses that seemed unshakable collapse, turning out to be mere hypotheses: the liberal generation (Harnack, Jülicher, etc.), the generation existentialist (Bultmann, etc.), the Marxist generation. I have seen and continue to see how the rationality of faith has emerged and is emerging again from the tangle of hypotheses. Jesus Christ is truly the way, the truth, and the life, and the Church, with all her insufficiencies, is truly his body.
Finally, I humbly ask: pray for me, so that the Lord, despite all my sins and defects, welcomes me into eternal dwellings. To all those who have been entrusted to me, day by day, I dedicate my prayers from the bottom of my heart.