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Michael Madrigal, a lay minister in the Diocese of San Bernardino, recites the “Native American Prayer to the Four Directions” at the beginning of the diocese’s opening Mass for the Synod on Synodality, Oct. 17, 2021 at Holy Angels Church in Rive… […]

Tabea Schneider (far left) with a group of other pilgrims who traveled 20 hours by bus from Cologne, Germany, to attend the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI on Jan. 5, 2023, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. / Courtney Mares / CNA

Vatican City, Jan 5, 2023 / 08:36 am (CNA).

Catholics from Germany, France, Ghana, India, Australia, Uganda, and many more countries who attended the funeral Mass for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on Thursday have shared their favorite memories of the late pope and why some decided to join in the chants of “santo subito” at the end of the ceremony.

More than 50,000 people attended the Jan. 5 funeral for the pope emeritus, who died at the age of 95 last Saturday. 

Among those in the crowd for the funeral was Arthur Escamila, who got to know Benedict XVI personally during the 2008 World Youth Day in Australia. 

“It was emotional seeing the coffin coming out of the basilica,” he told CNA.

Escamila, a numerary from Opus Dei, recalled how Benedict XVI rested for a few days in the Opus Dei center in Sydney where he was living at the time. 

“I had the privilege of living together with him for three days in Sydney in 2008 just before World Youth Day. We spent three days together. I attended his Mass. I ate with him. I listened to music with him,” he said.

Benedict XVI was “very humble” and “approachable,” Escamila remembered. “From the beginning he learned my name. He addressed me by my first name and I was very impressed by that.”

“My father had recently died. He was interested in that and asked me questions about my father, my family. He wanted to know about his illness. So I was personally touched,” he said.

“So his death meant a lot because it was closing a chapter where I knew the pope emeritus personally and had a connection with him that was personal.”

Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the archbishop of Bombay, also spoke about his personal memories of Benedict XVI.

The cardinal, who traveled from India for the funeral, told CNA that he found the funeral “very moving” and a “fitting farewell for the Holy Father Emeritus.”

“He was a great theologian, the greatest of the 20th century I think. I personally … whenever I read any article, any book, any homily of his I always got a new insight into theology or spirituality. His was a great contribution for the Church,” Gracias said.

The Indian cardinal also expressed gratitude for the many ways that the former pope touched his life: “He created me cardinal. He appointed me archbishop of Bombay … and we met often. I was on the committee for the translation of liturgical texts and so we discussed much there.”

Father Albert Musinguzi from Uganda said that he felt “deep spiritual joy” at the funeral, especially because it was the first Mass he had ever concelebrated at the Vatican.

“Although we have lost a great man, we are not mourning. We are celebrating a spiritual giant, a great man, a gift to the Church and to the entire world because Pope Benedict was a man not only for the Church but for the entire world,” he said.

The priest from Uganda’s Archdiocese of Mbarara, currently studying in Rome, said that he believes that the late pope emeritus is a saint.

“Pope Benedict was a humble pope, but a great theologian. We have learned from his humility to approach God from the Word of God. But what I like most from his preaching is that God and science are not opposed to each other … And what touched me most recently in the life of Pope Benedict XVI were his last words,” Musinguzi said.

“As we know Pope Benedict was 95 years old, so for 71 years he has given homilies and innumerable essays. He has written 66 books, three encyclicals, four exhortations, and he has summarized all of them in four words, which were his last four words: ‘Jesus, I love you.’”

Tabea Schneider traveled 20 hours by bus from Cologne, Germany, with many other enthusiastic German pilgrims who spontaneously decided to come to Rome for the funeral. She said that she was very moved when Pope Francis touched the coffin of Benedict XVI.

“It was a very emotional moment,” she said. 

A group of approximately 65 people from all across France traveled together to Rome for Benedict’s funeral.

The Famille Missionnaire de Notre-Dame, a men and women’s religious community, organized two buses.

After the funeral, the group prayed the Liturgy of the Hours outside St. Peter’s Square for the repose of the soul of Benedict XVI.

Sister Maksymiliana Domini, originally from Poland, told CNA the group arrived on Tuesday evening and will depart the night of the funeral.

“We love Pope Benedict,” she said, adding that they wanted to honor him and his legacy.

The Famille Missionnarie de Notre-Dame, she said, feels very close to Benedict because of their shared love for the Church’s liturgy and for an interpretation of the Second Vatican Council in the hermeneutic of continuity.

“We are 100% aligned with him spiritually,” Domini said.

Father Anthony Agnes Adu Mensah from Accra, Ghana, said that he enthusiastically joined in the chants of “santo subito” at the end of the Mass.

“I feel in my heart that Pope Benedict is a saint,” the priest said.

Hannah Brockhaus contributed to this report.

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CNA Staff, Jul 10, 2020 / 12:10 pm (CNA).- The Trump administration announced Thursday that it is putting travel and asset sanctions on several senior officials of the Chinese Communist Party for their role in the mass internment of Uyghurs.

An estimated 1 million Uyghurs, members of a Muslim ethnoreligious group, have been detained in re-education camps in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Inside the camps they are reportedly subjected to forced labor, torture, and political indoctrination. Outside the camps, Uyghurs are monitored by pervasive police forces and facial recognition technology.

“The United States will not stand idly by as the CCP carries out human rights abuses targeting Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and members of other minority groups in Xinjiang, to include forced labor, arbitrary mass detention, and forced population control, snd attempts to erase their culture and Muslim faith,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced July 9.

“The United States is taking action today against the horrific and systematic abuses in Xinjiang and calls on all nations who share our concerns about the CCP’s attacks on human rights and fundamental freedoms to join us in condemning this behavior,” he added.

Chen Quanguo, Communist Party Secretary of Xinjiang, and two other party officials of the region, Zhu Hailun and Wang Mingshan, as well as their immediate family members, will be unable to attain visas to enter the US.

Other CCP officals “believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, the unjust detention or abuse of Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and members of other minority groups in Xinjiang” are also being sanctioned with visa restrictions.

Chen, Zhu, Wang, and Huo Liujun, a former police official in Xinjiang, are being sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, as is the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau.

Their assets and entities in the US are blocked, and US persons may not do business with them.

“The United States is committed to using the full breadth of its financial powers to hold human rights abusers accountable in Xinjiang and across the world,” commented Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin.

Chen is also a member of the Politburo, a group of 25 who oversee the CCP, and he was Communist Party Secretary of Tibet from 2011-16. He is the highest-ranking Chinese official to have been sanctioned by the US.

Nury Turkel, a Uyghur human rights advocates who is a commissioner at the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, had told CNA June 24 that the commission “is disappointed that the U.S. government has not yet enacted targeted sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for the mass detention of Uyghur and other Muslims.”

President Donald Trump had on June 17 signed legislation that would impose financial and visa sanctions on individuals complicit in abuses in Xinjiang. The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act directs the president to impose sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act, one of several laws authorizing the president to sanction human rights abusers.

The statements explaining the new sanctions from both the State and Treasury Departments referred to the Magnitsky Act.

The Chinese government has defended its policy of mass detention and re-education as an appropriate measure against terrorism.

The government at one time denied the camps even existed, but has since shifted to defending its actions as a reasonable response to a national security threat.

Government officials from the region said in July 2019 that the area’s re-education camps for Muslims have been successful, with most of those held having been reintegrated into Chinese society.

Uyghurs can be arrested and detained under vague anti-terrorism laws. Violence in the region escalated in the 1990s and again in 2008.

The US Commerce Department in October 2019 added 28 Chinese organizations to a blacklist barring them from buying products from US companies, saying they cooperate in the detention and repression of the Uyghurs.

A 2019 document from a Xinjiang county leaked to western media earlier this year gave violation of birth control policies as the most common reason for the “re-education” of some 3,000 Uyghurs, often alongside other reasons.

Last week an AP investigation found a systematic campaign by the CCP of pregnancy checks and forced abortions, sterilizations, and implantations of IUDs on Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang.

The birth rate in the region plunged by 24% in 2019, the AP said, and in certain parts of the province birth rates had fallen by more than 60% from 2015 to 2018. 

[…]