The Pope Emeritus has written to an Italian newspaper to say he is “on a pilgrimage Home” in this “final period of my life”. In a nine-line letter to Corriere della Sera, Benedict XVI thanked the paper’s readers for their concern, and assured them he was surrounded “by a love and a goodness that I could not have imagined”. “I was moved that so many readers of your newspaper want to know how I am spending this last period of my life,” he wrote. “I can only say in this regard that, in the slow decline of physical strengths, inwardly I am on a pilgrimage Home,” he added, capitalising the Italian word Casa. “It is a great grace for me to be surrounded, in this rather tiring last piece of the road, by a love and a goodness that I could not have imagined.” He said he considered the reader’s concerns as “company” on his journey, and assured them of his prayers. The paper said it had contacted Benedict XVI through private channels to ask him how he was doing. The letter, marked “urgent by hand”, arrived at their Rome headquarters last Tuesday morning from “Monastero Mater Ecclesiae, V-120, Città del Vatican”, the former pope’s residence. Last Sunday marked the fifth anniversary of Benedict XVI’s shock announcement that he intended to resign the papacy. His resignation took effect on February 28 that year. Mgr Alfred Xuereb, the pope’s private secretary at the time, said he heard Benedict XVI promise his “total obedience” to Francis in his first phone call with the newly elected Pontiff. Mgr Xuereb, who now serves as secretary general of the Secretariat for Economy, explained to Vatican Radio that Pope Francis wanted to phone Benedict XVI before he went out to greet the world on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square. “We were in the television room, where the telephone is always in silent mode, so we didn’t hear the call. That explains why Pope Francis took some time to go out. Afterwards, they called us again during dinner, and they asked us where we’d been… There in front of the TV… They told us that Pope Francis was going to call again after dinner, and so it was. I passed the telephone to Benedict, and I heard him say, ‘Holiness, from this moment on, I promise you my total obedience and my prayers.’ Those are moments that I cannot forget.”