2 very close popes - as it should be

[MarieT]

close right to the end

[MarieT]

[MarieT]

[MarieT]

[MarieT]

[MarieT]

closely monitoring his ailing pope

[MarieT]

"I would like to thank God for the gift of having worked for many years with Pope John Paul II. I had known him earlier and had esteemed him, but for twenty-three years, beginning in 1982 after he called me to Rome to be Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I was at his side and came to revere him all the more. My own service was sustained by his spiritual depth and by the richness of his insights. His example of prayer continually impressed and edified me: he remained deeply united to God even amid the many demands of his ministry. Then too, there was his witness in suffering: the Lord gradually stripped him of everything, yet he remained ever a “rock”, as Christ desired. His profound humility, grounded in close union with Christ, enabled him to continue to lead the Church and to give to the world a message which became all the more eloquent as his physical strength declined. In this way he lived out in an extraordinary way the vocation of every priest and bishop to become completely one with Jesus, whom he daily receives and offers in the Church."
- Pope Benedict XVI, Beatification Mass, 1 May 2011.

[Denise]