Vatican Radio has provided a translation of the Pope Benedict XVI's last General Audience of his pontificate to a packed Saint Peter's Square.
Here is an except from the General Audience:
"In
recent months, I felt that my strength had decreased, and I asked God
with insistence in prayer to enlighten me with His light to make me take
the right decision – not for my sake, but for the good of the Church. I
have taken this step in full awareness of its severity and also its
novelty, but with a deep peace of mind. Loving the Church also means
having the courage to make difficult, trying choices, having ever before
oneself the good of the Church and not one’s own.
"Here allow me
to return once again to April 19, 2005. The gravity of the decision was
precisely in the fact that from that moment on I was committed always
and forever by the Lord. Always – he, who assumes the Petrine ministry
no longer has any privacy. He belongs always and totally to everyone,
to the whole Church. His life is, so to speak, totally deprived of the
private sphere. I have felt, and I feel even in this very moment, that
one receives one’s life precisely when he offers it as a gift. I said
before that many people who love the Lord also love the Successor of
Saint Peter and are fond of him, that the Pope has truly brothers and
sisters, sons and daughters all over the world, and that he feels safe
in the embrace of their communion, because he no longer belongs to
himself, but he belongs to all and all are truly his own.
"The 'always' is also a 'forever' - there is no returning to private life. My
decision to forgo the exercise of active ministry, does not revoke
this. I do not return to private life, to a life of travel, meetings,
receptions, conferences and so on. I do not abandon the cross, but
remain in a new way near to the Crucified Lord. I no longer wield the
power of the office for the government of the Church, but in the service
of prayer I remain, so to speak, within St. Peter’s bounds. St.
Benedict, whose name I bear as Pope, shall be a great example in this
for me. He showed us the way to a life which, active or passive, belongs
wholly to the work of God.
"I thank each and every one of you for
the respect and understanding with which you have welcomed this
important decision. I continue to accompany the Church on her way
through prayer and reflection, with the dedication to the Lord and to
His Bride, which I have hitherto tried to live daily and that I would
live forever. I ask you to remember me before God, and above all to pray
for the Cardinals, who are called to so important a task, and for the
new Successor of Peter, that the Lord might accompany him with the light
and the power of His Spirit."
To read the entire transcript, click here.
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