The death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has brought “a sense of sadness” to the faithful but “also a sense of gratitude … as we thank almighty God for the good shepherd he was,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York said in his homily at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Jan. 1, the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God.

Representatives from the world’s Christian churches will travel to the Vatican to attend the funeral Mass of Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter’s Square Jan. 5.

By their lives, Mary and the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI helped people to seek and to see the face of God, Washington Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory said Dec. 31.

The Jan. 5 funeral Mass for Pope Benedict XVI will be a papal funeral with a few changes to fit with the fact that he was not the reigning pope and has not left behind a “sede vacante.”

With the passing of Pope Benedict XVI, the question has been raised anew as to whether Pope Francis will now issue new protocols for a pope who steps down from office, as many have speculated.

An inexorable media dynamic occurs whenever a major public figure dies: During the gap between the death and the funeral, journalists scramble to fill column inches and airwaves with something — anything, really — to sustain interest in the story until there’s actual news to report.

A quiet hush covered the vast expanse of St. Peter’s Square even though it was filled with thousands of people slowly winding their way around the colonnade into St. Peter’s Basilica to pay their last respects to the late Pope Benedict XVI.

In 1997, American journalist and Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny published a biography of Pope John Paul II, now St. John Paul, titled Man of the Century. By that, Kwitny didn’t necessarily mean the Polish pope was the greatest man of the 20th century, but that no one’s life story better recapitulated the great dramas of the time, from the unraveling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire his father had served as an army officer to the rise and fall of both Nazism and Soviet Communism and the emergence of a newly globalized world.

In accordance with Pope Benedict XVI’s wishes, his funeral and moments of prayer surrounding it will be simple, according to the Vatican press office.

Bishop Robert Brennan of Brooklyn has asked the diocese to join him in prayer for the repose of the soul of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, remembering him as an intellectual and holy man who “deeply loved God and served the Church generously throughout his whole life.”