







The great and the good filed into Milan’s famous gothic cathedral yesterday afternoon for the funeral mass of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, one of the church’s best-loved figures. Pope Benedict XVI wasn’t one of them, however. Cardinal Angelo Comastri, the head priest of St Peter’s Basilica, represented the pontiff.
The deeply conservative Benedict would have read, like everyone else, the liberal Cardinal Martini’s scathing verdict on the church and its current leadership, which he described as “200 years out of date”. In his message relayed by Cardinal Comastri, the Pope nonetheless expressed his “closeness in affection and prayer to the entire diocese of Milan, the Jesuits and the relatives and all those who had loved and admired Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini”…………………………..
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