President Higgins led Irish tributes to former Pope Benedict XVI, who died yesterday aged 95, saying he will be remembered for his “steadfast interest in peace” in Northern Ireland.
Higgins also spoke of Benedict’s “personal commitment” to intellectual work within the Catholic Church, which he described as being “respected by both supporters and critics”.
“Of particular importance was that during his tenure, Pope Benedict sought to highlight both the common purpose of the world’s major religions and his injunctions as to how our individual responsibilities as citizens require the highest standards of ethics in our actions,” the president said.
Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach, said he was “saddened” to learn of Benedict’s death. “Leading the Catholic Church for almost a decade, the son of a police officer and a cook, the first German elected as Pope in one thousand years, he was ultimately a ‘humble worker in vineyard of the Lord’,” Varadkar said. “Today my thoughts are with Archbishop Eamon Martin and with all those in Ireland who will find the news of his passing as both saddening but also difficult.”
Micheál Martin, the tanaiste, also commended the late pope for his commitment to peace in Northern Ireland and across the world. The foreign affairs minister said Benedict had shown “great strength of character and humility” in his decision to leave the papacy.
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Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin, leader of the Catholic Church across the island of Ireland, said he had been struck by Benedict’s “characteristic humility and gentleness” when the pair met in the Vatican in 2009.
He acknowledged a letter penned by Benedict in 2010 condemning sexual abuse of children by members of the clergy in Ireland. “He issued a unique Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland expressing profound sorrow for those grievously wounded by abuse in the Church.
“He called for urgent action to address the legacy of abuse which, he said, has had ‘such tragic consequences in the lives of victims and their families’, and ‘obscured the light of the Gospel to a degree that not even centuries of persecution succeeded in doing’.”
Archbishop of Armagh John McDowell, of the Church of Ireland, said Benedict was a man of “deep spiritual insight combined with a capacity for focused and articulate theological expression”, adding: “During his life, he combined the role of churchman and theologian with energy, leaving as a legacy a substantive body of published work.”
Fr D. Vincent Twomey, retired professor of moral theology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, studied under the former Joseph Ratzinger at the University of Regensburg in the 1970s. He said he last visited Benedict in September: “I knew him very well and he was a very humble, highly intelligent man with a warm heart.”
