Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI will be remembered as the first pontiff in 600 years to resign from the job. He died on Saturday at 95.
On 11 February 2013 he announced that he no longer had the strength to run the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church.
Although Benedict was nicknamed ‘God’s Rottweiler’ by some in the media, he was very kind and a fiercely smart academic.
Benedict never wanted to be Pope, being forced to follow the footsteps of Pope John Paul II.
He had a single-minded vision to rekindle the faith in a world that he said seemed to think it could do without God.
Benedict was a teacher, theologian and academic; quiet and pensive with a fierce mind. He also had a weakness for orange Fanta.
He became the second pope ever to enter a synagogue. In his 2011 book, “Jesus of Nazareth”, Benedict explained biblically and theologically why there was no basis in Scripture for the argument that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for the death of Jesus.
Benedict offended some Jews with his promotion toward sainthood of Pope Pius XII, the World War II-era pope accused of having failed to sufficiently denounce the Holocaust.
Benedict also angered Muslims with a speech in 2006 in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor who characterised some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as ‘evil and inhuman’, particularly his command to spread the faith ‘by the sword’.
Benedict had to deal with the Church’s sex abuse scandal which erupted in 2010. In 2012, Benedict’s former butler was convicted of aggravated theft of a huge stash of papal documents.
After retirement Benedict wrote a book in which he defended the celibate priesthood, while Pope Francis was considering an exception. This sparked demands for future ‘popes emeritus’ to keep quiet.
Benedict was the oldest pope elected in 275 years and the first German in nearly 1,000 years.