On February 19 Irish Prime Minister made an official government apology for state involvement in the Magdalene Laundries, a network of workhouses that were run by Catholic religious orders between 1922 and 1966. More than 10,000 women and girls were forced into unpaid labor at the laundries. Following the government’s apology hundreds more women have come forward, each potentially due thousands in compensation.

The pope has resigned or retired. That statement really takes a while to settle in. Writing in the New York Times, Fr. Jim Martin noted that "Rare is the person who will voluntarily relinquish immense power." In the last few weeks, we have become experts in church history, learning about Gregory VII, Celestine V and other popes who have resigned. Yet perhaps we should also be looking at the humble Saint of Assisi and founder of the Franciscan Order. After all, it isn’t only popes who resign. St. Francis resigned too! When St. Francis resigned as leader of the Franciscan Order, he offered a lesson in holiness, humility and power. I think these are things that Pope Benedict is teaching us as well and will, in the end, be his most lasting legacy.

The crowds were larger, the audience wider as Benedict XVI spoke at his final general audience Wednesday, Feb. 27. His candor was striking: “There have been times when the seas were rough and the wind against us, as in the whole history of the church it has ever been - and the Lord seemed to sleep.” And amid the thanks, to his collaborators, the people of the church, a wider public, there was a sense of hopefulness, that he was not in it alone: “I said before that many people who love the Lord also love the Successor of Saint Peter and are fond of him, that the pope has truly brothers and sisters, sons and daughters all over the world, and that he feels safe in the embrace of their communion, because he no longer belongs to himself, but he belongs to all and all are truly his own.”

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Dutiful readers of In All Things will know that I am in the midst of a Lenten series of meditations on the Second Chapter of the Yoga Sutras, the “Yoga of Practice.” I am just up to the part where I will begin to discuss the “restraints” (yama: non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, celibacy, and non-grasping) and “observances” (niyama: purity, contentment, austerity, one’s own study, and dedication to the Lord). Celibacy will be discussed briefly in this context. Reading the Yoga Sutras on such matters is interesting, since it shows us how asceticism and celibacy have been thought of outside the West and in a different religion, many centuries ago.

“I only wish I had more to give,” an elderly Jesuit said at a community meeting a few days before he left for the infirmary. One can imagine Pope Benedict having the same sentiments during his last days in office. Joseph Ratzinger’s time as the Holy Father has come to an end; he is utterly spent. Yet he will always be heroic to me. I do not say this is in a saccharine manner, nor do I expect that everyone have the same impression. Few would have guessed that the little old man (I mean that with all respect and affection) elected eight years ago would live up to such a claim. He surely did not either, seeming to choose deliberately the name of a pope who had already faded into history but who had done what he could for peace in the last century. Upon assuming Peter’s chair, Pope Benedict XVI told us that we as God’s people would have to accept what Joseph Ratzinger knew he was all along: “a simple, humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord.” At the announcement of his stepping down, he requested “pardon” for his “defects.”