New curbs on the Traditional Latin Mass “broke Pope Benedict’s heart”, according to his private secretary. Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the closest confidant of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, revealed that the de facto reversal of his policies to liberate the Old Mass came as a heavy blow to the former pontiff, who died on Saturday at

My generation of brother priests are those who sprang up buoyant from “the Benedict Bounce”: a phenomenon associated with the papal visit which breathed fresh life into the Catholic Church in Britain. It is all the more compelling that on face value alone it was nothing exterior that intrigued us about Pope Benedict, which we might typically have associated with celebrities. It was his gentleness and warmth, together with his phenomenal mind and beautiful theology, that spoke to us of his heart of prayer. He was holy man and, ultimately, holiness is the most attractive thing in the world.

It was not until I got to the Jesuit-run Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI, that I realized just how deeply some Catholics disliked him. I remember sitting in a class as one of my classmates, a Catholic priest, went on for a good ten minutes about the scourge that was Pope Benedict XVI. He also threw in a choice dig about the oppressive nature of clerical dress. By then I had been ordained in the Episcopal Church; I was wearing my collar because when I left parish ministry for doctoral work my bishop said “You are there for the sake and service of the Church, so you need to dress like it.”

I was in our community chapel, just before Mass, when I received a message that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had died. My immediate reaction was a whispered “thank you” to him, for we have so much to be grateful to him for. Without him and without Anglicanorum Coetibus, his Apostolic Constitution that made it possible for groups of Anglicans to enter into full communion with the Holy See, we might not be here at all.

Benedict's legacy feels as relevant as ever. In his spiritual testament, he said “Stand firm in the Faith! Do not be confused!” His was a clear, steady voice in a confusing and complex world. In times of darkness or trial it has always been gentle, quiet, assured voices that have kept me from breaking; his has been one of them. Compassion, even the type that strikes us like lightning, doesn’t need to compromise truth or reason, and Pope Benedict XVI showed us how.

The embodiment of this personal journey, which I have always seen as growing from a personal bond with Pope Benedict, came in Anglicanorum coetibus in 2010. The personal ordinariates are the most tangible legacy of Benedict’s pontificate, permanently establishing in structures his liturgical and ecclesiological vision. This is of course why his loss is for us at once a cause for sadness and gratitude.

We will miss him immensely, and we mourn his passing, but we also know that the richness of his thought and his convictions continue in our communities, in our worship, and in the lives of thousands of former Anglicans who now rejoice in the full communion and peace of what St John Henry Newman calls “the one fold of the Redeemer”.

Pope Francis, King Charles III and President Joe Biden are among the world leaders who have paid tribute to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who died this morning at the Vatican at the age of 95. Pope Francis “It is with emotion that we remember his person, so noble and so kind. And we feel in our

Reading Ratzinger is a commitment to moving beyond simplistic truisms such as the juxtaposition of charity and justice as a zero-sum game and to seeking to understand the depths of things, to see beyond the natural world into the supernatural, beyond the physical life to the eschatological, beyond the body to the soul, without ever embracing any false dualism but rather interrogating knowledge and life, orthodoxy and praxis, as an integrated whole.