Illinois Valley clergy recall meeting Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI: ‘He was a very humble, gentle man’

Back in 2005, Monsignor Mark Merdian shook hands and chatted with Pope John Paul II – his bishop got him into a papal Mass – but little did he know he would meet two popes on his Rome vacation.

Merdian, now pastor of the Ottawa Catholic Parishes, said he and his brother priests were enjoying an afternoon in St. Peter’s Square when they spied a German cardinal named Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith.

Another high-ranking cleric might have looked the other way and walked past the gawkers. Ratzinger, however, stopped and warmly greeted the American visitors. Merdian then received a blessing from the future Benedict XVI.

“He was very kind and very gracious,” Merdian recalled. “He didn’t look past us. He knew we were looking at him and wanted to greet him and he stopped. He was always known to be very humble.

“And that’s how he operated as the Holy Father.”

Merdian was among the local clergy to pay homage to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and his eight-year reign on Thursday, the day he was laid to rest within the crypt at St. Peter’s Basilica.

Nearly 5,000 miles away, other priests gathered at a La Salle church to say farewell to the former pontiff. Clergy today are well-versed in Benedict’s theology – he was an accomplished theologian long before his accession in 2005 – and was for eight years the pontiff for whom they prayed at Mass.

The Very Rev. Paul Carlson, pastor of Holy Family Church in Oglesby, addressed a mostly-full church and reminded the faithful that Benedict’s last words reportedly were, “Lord, I love you.”

“We come to pray for a good and holy man who sacrificed his life for us,” Carlson said, who termed Benedict “a father figure to me,” as Carlson was a seminarian in Rome during Benedict’s reign.

Carlson acknowledged the unusual end of Benedict’s papacy: He abdicated in 2013 – “It almost felt like a death” – and his quasi-retirement stretched nearly 10 years. Across the globe, Catholics are mourning a pope though not the sitting pope.

Carlson and others described Benedict as a misunderstood figure. As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, he suppressed heretical movements and earned the derisive nickname “the pope’s rottweiler” despite his personal warmth and approachability.

The Very Rev. Gary Blake, pastor of the Peru Catholic Parishes, met Benedict at a 2008 papal Mass in Washington, D.C. While the counter was fleeting, Benedict left an impression with his mere presence.

“He was a very humble, gentle man,” Blake recalled. “There are certain ones – and he was one of them – you could kind of acknowledge the holiness.”