Transfer of the body to S. Peter

The tireless and humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord, one of the greatest German intellectual figures and philanthropists of our epoch, Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI since April 19, 2005, passed away on the commemoration day of the holy pope Silvester. Thus the Roman Institute of the Görres Society loses its most prominent member and one of its most loyal supporters.

Ratzinger had been a member of the RIGG since 1982, after he had moved from Munich to Rome and lived for the first months at the Campo Santo Teutonico (in the room Cologne right next to the library). Joseph Ratzinger celebrated Holy Mass at the college every Thursday morning. The jubilation at his election to the Petrine office in the crowded St. Peter's Square knew no bounds.

The attachment remained. He elevated the college to the status of Pontifical College. His papal coat of arms will forever adorn the church entrance. In 2015, with his permission, the Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI Study Library was established in the college library, containing all works by him and about him in all languages. Here his intellectual legacy lives on.

This is not the place to pay tribute to Joseph Ratzinger's life's work. We are still overwhelmed by grief and deep gratitude. His services to the theological sciences, which were always close to his heart, are immeasurable. He represented a Catholicism that did not shy away from any intellectual challenge and sought to find what was truly common in every dispute: to be collaborator of truth, not master of truth, was his life's theme.

His resignation was incomprehensible and remains an unfathomable secret of his soul. It is very difficult to say goodbye to someone who was so kind, so loud and wise, who accompanied us for so long as a praying father, and who now simply leaves and is no longer there.

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March 13, 1985 at Campo Santo Teutonico. In addition to Cardinal Ratzinger and Paul Josef Cordes, Erwin Gatz, director of the RIGG, and his predecessor, Dominican Father Ambrosius Eszer, can be seen, as well as Father Pius Engelbert OSB and Klaus Ganzer behind Ratzinger.