Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki made the remark in an interview with Polish state news agency PAP, published on Thursday.
Benedict XVI’s funeral began in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Thursday morning, with the Polish president and prime minister in attendance.
Pope Francis presides over the funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Thursday, January 5, 2023. Photo: EPA/MASSIMO PERCOSSI
Photo: EPA/MASSIMO PERCOSSI
It was set to be an unprecedented ceremony, with the current Pope, Francis, presiding over the burial of his predecessor, news outlets reported.
'Benedict XVI loved Poland'
Archbishop Gądecki, the Polish Church’s top representative to the funeral, said: “Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI loved Poland.”
The senior Polish church official added: “Benedict XVI had an affinity with Poland since the 1970s, first with the Lower Silesia region, and then with other places as well.”
Gądecki told the PAP news agency that Benedict’s "links to Poland culminated with his papal visit to the country on May 25-28, 2006, which took in the capital Warsaw, the southern city of Kraków and the former Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau in what is today the southern Polish city of Oświęcim."
Gądecki, who heads the Polish Episcopal Conference, the central authority of the Catholic Church in Poland, said: “Benedict XVI regarded the Poles as a people of deep faith. His wish for us was that we keep the faith, hence the motto of his 2006 papal visit: ‘Stand firm in your faith.’”
'End of an era'
The senior Polish bishop also told PAP: “The funeral of Pope Benedict XVI is the symbolic end of an era. The Catholic Church, including the Polish Church, owes a lot to Benedict XVI.”
Gądecki added that "Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, first as a close associate of Pope John Paul II, and then as Pope Benedict XVI, bore the weight of responsibility for the Church community, protecting the purity of the faith.”
Polish President Andrzej Duda has said in a social media post that Benedict was "one of the pre-eminent theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries."
Duda added that Benedict's "life, works and priestly service are a signpost among the many winding and deceptive roads of the contemporary world."
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, vatican.va, CNN
