Warsaw, Dec 31, (dpa/GNA) – Top politicians in intensely Catholic Poland, are paying tribute to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, following his death on Saturday.
The world has lost “one of the most extraordinary theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries,” President Andrzej Duda wrote on Twitter.
With his life, his work and his pastoral ministry, Benedict had served as a signpost through the treacherous turns of modern life, Duda said.
Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, described Benedict as “a great Catholic thinker, a spiritual authority and a man, albeit a modest one, of exceptional stature.”
Benedict, he noted, had worked closely with Pope John Paul II, a native of Poland, as long-time chairman of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. “Maybe that’s why he had a special relationship with our country,” Morawiecki said, according to the PAP news agency.
The spokesman for the Polish Bishops’ Conference, Leszek Gesiak, praised the German Pope as a “person of great simplicity and humility.”
GNA