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Good morning. The death of Joseph Ratzinger, otherwise known as Pope Benedict XVI, has left many Catholics with a deep sense of personal loss. I loved him. I converted to Catholicism shortly before he became Pope, and it was an incredible blessing to discover my new faith at the moment it was led by a dynamic intellectual. His message was simple: pursue a friendship with Christ. The media called him “God’s Rottweiler”, because he was German; because as a child he’d been compelled to join the Hitler Youth; and because, though he had been something of a reformer as a young man, he was later regarded as a reactionary enforcer of doctrine - to the frustration of those who thought the church needed to change. By Benedict - who loved cats - had a different sense of his mission. He liked to quote the story of St Corbinian who, when travelling to Rome, was attacked by a bear that killed his horse. The saint reprimanded the bear for its crime and, as punishment, forced it to carry his bags all the way home. It wasn’t the saint that Benedict was comparing himself to - it was the bear. What he really wanted was a quiet life, the freedom to get on with writing his books, but he had to carry the burden of high clerical office - to be a servant to other servants. As Pope, he made many mistakes, and he said as much. He resigned after eight years, the first Pope to do so since 1415, effectively acknowledging that the burden was too great for him to do what had to be done. The humility that shaped that decision was obvious to all when Benedict visited Britain in 2010. If you want a sense of his incisiveness, why he matters in these alarming times, I recommend you read his speech to Westminster, where he deliberated on the relationship between politics and religion - warning that if the morality behind decision making is based on nothing more than what a majority of people think at any one time, there is nothing to stop us going down the road of fascism or communism. Religion, he argued, can help shed light on fundamental principles, such as the dignity of the individual or the care of the poor. The world of faith and the world of secular reason need each other; they should not be afraid to engage. Benedict taught that Jesus was a force for “liberation”. The powerful fear Christianity's message because it threatens their authority - but, he once said, if you and I let love into our life “we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great.”