Atlanta priest, Catholics reflect on late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

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Pope Benedict XVI presides over his general weekly audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. Benedict died Dec. 31, 2022 at the age of 95. He made history by being the first pope in centuries to resign.

Georgians are remembering former Pope Benedict XVI, who died Dec. 31 at age 95. His coffin was interred in the grottoes beneath St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday morning after a rare requiem Mass presided over by Pope Francis.

Father Luke Ballman, a Catholic priest for the Archdiocese of Atlanta, was ordained to the diaconate by then-Cardinal Ratzinger.

"And it really, for me, was a profound encounter with a theological giant,” Ballman said. “Of course, in 1999 we did not know that this cardinal, this man, would become our next pope."

Ballman said the North American College in Rome, where he was a student, had been trying for some time to have Cardinal Ratzinger ordain the fourth-year theologians as deacons. In 1999, Ballman’s fourth year, it worked out and in October Ratzinger ordained Ballman and 30 others to the diaconate — or as deacons — at Saint Peter’s Basilica.

"At one point in the liturgy, the rite of ordination, with my hands folded in prayer, he places his hands over mine," Ballman said. "He takes my hands in his hands and that was perhaps for me the high point, or at least the point that I remember as a high point. And so he did that with all of us."

After Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, Ballman recalls his gratitude, but not because he had been ordained by a future pope.

“I was proud that I could, in a way, through all of his writings and his speaking≤ share with those whom I knew the person who ordained me a deacon."

Those in the Atlanta area had a chance to reflect on Benedict, as well. The Archdiocese of Atlanta on Thursday evening celebrated Mass for the repose of the soul of Benedict.

Ballman told GPB Thursday afternoon, the mass is a chance for the local community to come together, to worship God, to grieve the loss of the former pope and to pray for him.

“And so doing that together as a faith community… is a way in which we can participate in this great act of thanksgiving for this pope who was so dear to us, but also to speed his journey into the arms of our loving God," Ballman said.