Vatican City, Dec 17, 2007 / 08:47 am
At five o’clock in the evening on Friday, the Pope presided at the funeral of the Austrian Cardinal Alfons Maria Stickler S.D.B. in St. Peter's Basilica. The Pope praised Cardinal Stickler as a man who lived a life always motivated by humble adherence to God’s will and faithfulness to the Church.
The diseased cardinal, who was the archivist and librarian emeritus of Holy Roman Church, passed away on December 12 at the age of 97.
In his homily the Pope recalled how, in his spiritual testament, the late cardinal had written that "as a Salesian I follow the three ideals handed down to us by Don Bosco: love for the Eucharist, devotion to the Virgin Mary and faithfulness to the Holy Father."
Cardinal Stickler "well knew," said the Holy Father, "that to love Christ is to love His Church, which is ever holy despite, as he himself notes in his spiritual testament, 'the sometimes scandalous weakness of we her representatives, in both past and present'."