Vatican City, Feb 23, 2013 / 07:21 am
Benedict XVI finished his final Lenten spiritual exercises as Pope by thanking his collaborators for support and help these last eight years and by reflecting on the relationship between truth and beauty.
"I would like to thank you all, not only for this week, but for the past eight years, in which you have borne with me, with great skill, affection, love, faith, the weight of the Petrine ministry," Pope Benedict said Feb. 23 in his closing remarks for the week-long retreat.
"This gratitude remains within me and even if this visible exterior communion is now ending - as Cardinal Ravasi has said - the spiritual closeness, a deep communion in prayer, remains.
"In this certainty let us go forward," the Pope stated, "confident in the victory of God, sure of the truth, of beauty, and of love."