Dear brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects. And now, let us entrust the holy church to the care of our supreme pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the cardinal fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new supreme pontiff. With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the holy church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.
—Pope Benedict XVI
In honor of the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI, and in recognition of his invocation of Mary as “Mediatrix of all graces,” and because I’ve got nothing else today, here’s an oldie from the archives:









