By Andrea Hargraves 
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI left a spiritual testament asking for “forgiveness from the heart” of those who may have hurt him in his life and urging the Church to “steadfast” in the faith in the face of ideas that try to fight him.
The document, titled “My Spiritual Testament,” issued by the Holy See this Saturday, reads in German and Italian: “To all whom I have hurt in any way, I sincerely ask forgiveness.”
Benedict XVI, who died today at the age of 95, begins the document by thanking God for his guidance in “various moments of confusion.”
“First of all, I thank God, Distributor of all goodness, who has given me life and guided me through various moments of confusion, lifted me up whenever I began to slip, and shown me the light of His face again and again,” he writes.
The Pope Emeritus also thanks the parents who gave him life “in a difficult moment”, in Germany, in 1927, between the two great wars and when the country was heading towards Nazism, and the brothers Maria and George.
Benedict XVI, whose original name was Joseph Ratzinger, is also grateful to the “many friends, men and women” who accompanied him throughout his life and to the teachers and students he had, as well as to his country and his native Bavaria where, he says, he always saw “the manifestation of the Creator’s splendor”.
Addressing the German people directly, he wrote: “I pray that our land will remain a land of faith, and I ask you, dear compatriots, not to stray from the faith.”
“What I said to my countrymen, I now say to all those in the Church who have been entrusted to my service: Be firm in the faith! Let not yourselves be perplexed!” , Encourage.
In this sense, Benedict XVI presents an appeal in defense of faith against supposed philosophical and scientific interpretations that seek to pacify it or diminish its importance.
“It often seems that science—the natural sciences, on the one hand, and historical research (particularly the interpretation of the Bible) on the other—is capable of providing unequivocal results in the face of the Catholic faith,” he says.
But he adds: “I have seen the transformations which have taken place in the natural sciences since antiquity, and have been able to ascertain how, on the contrary, the obvious certainty against faith disappears, showing that it is not a science, but only philosophical explanations apparently connected to science.”
Faith, Ratzinger notes, dialogued with the natural sciences and “learned” with them to understand “better the limits of the dimensions of their assertions”.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who died today at the age of 95, shook the church by resigning from the papacy for health reasons on February 11, 2013, two months before he celebrated eight years in office.
Born in 1927 in Marktl am Inn, in the German diocese of Passau, Josef Ratzinger, who was pope between 2005 and 2013, became the first German to head the Catholic Church in many centuries and a representative of the church’s most dogmatic lines. .
The sexual abuse of minors by priests and “Vateleaks”, in which case secret papal documents were exposed, were the issues that excited his pontificate.
Benedict XVI called the abuse a “heinous crime” and apologized to the victims.
Benedict XVI’s funeral will take place on Thursday, in St. Peter’s Square, the Vatican, at 9:30 a.m. local time (8:30 a.m. in Lisbon), in a ceremony presided over by Pope Francis.