Donegal woman 'honoured' to do reading at funeral of Pope Benedict

Mary Maguire reads at the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI.

A Donegal woman was chosen as one of the people to do a reading at the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday.

The Requiem Mass of the former pope took place in the Vatican on Thursday and was historic as Benedict became the first former pontiff in the modern history of the Catholic church to be buried by the incumbent pope, Francis.

Letterkenny native Mary Maguire was chosen to do the second reading during the Mass, from the first letter of St Peter (1:3-9).

Speaking to RTÉ at the Vatican afterwards, Ms Maguire said it was "an honour" to be chosen.

"I got such a shock. My initial reaction in my heart was 'no', and then I talked with my family and they encouraged me 'go, go, this is a wonderful opportunity'.

It was such an honour, when I was reading and I just had so much joy in my heart afterwards, real, real joy

"Although it was a sad occasion, I just felt so much joy. It was an honour to be here."

Ms Maguire is said to do a lot of work in Letterkenny with the St Vincent de Paul charity.

Archbishop Georg Ganswein, right, follows the coffin of late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI as it is carried away after a funeral mass in St Peter's Square at the Vatican, Picture: Andrew Medichini

Monsignor Kevin Gillespie, who was a personal master of ceremonies to Pope Benedict, comes from the Raphoe Diocese, of which Ms Maguire is a member.

Some 50,000 mourners attended the funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, according to local police. 

The former Joseph Ratzinger, who died on December 31 aged 95, is considered one of the 20th century’s greatest theologians and spent his life upholding church doctrine. But he will go down in history for a singular, revolutionary act which changed the future of the papacy: he retired, the first pope in six centuries to do so.

Heads of state and royalty, clergy from around the world and thousands of regular people flocked to the ceremony, despite Benedict’s requests for simplicity and official efforts to keep the first funeral for a pope emeritus in modern times low-key.

Francis has praised Benedict’s courage to step aside, saying it “opened the door” to other popes doing the same. The reigning pontiff, for his part, recently said he had already left written instructions outlining the conditions in which he too would resign.

Francis did not dwell on Benedict’s specific legacy in his homily and only uttered his name once, in the final line, delivering instead a meditation on Jesus’s willingness to entrust himself to God’s will.

“Holding fast to the Lord’s last words and to the witness of his entire life, we too, as an ecclesial community, want to follow in his steps and to commend our brother into the hands of the father,” Francis said at the end.

During St John Paul II’s 25 years as pope, Ratzinger spearheaded a crackdown on dissent as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, taking action against the left-leaning liberation theology that spread in Latin America in the 1970s and against dissenting theologians and nuns who did not toe the Vatican’s hard line on matters like sexual morals.

His legacy was marred by the church's sexual abuse scandal, even though he recognised earlier than most the “filth” of priests who raped children and actually laid the groundwork for the Holy See to punish them.

As cardinal and pope, he passed sweeping church legislation that resulted in 848 priests being defrocked from 2004-2014, roughly his pontificate with a year on either end. But abuse survivors still held him responsible for the crisis, for failing to sanction any bishop who moved abusers around and identifying him as embodying the clerical system that long protected the institution over victims.

Additional reporting from AP