Text
Miserere mei, Deus, secundum (magnam) misericordiam tuam
These words, which, aware of my unworthiness and insufficiency, I pronounced at the moment, in which with trepidation I accepted the election as Pope, I now repeat with even greater justification, because I am even more aware of my unworthiness and insufficiency after inadequacies and errors during so long a pontificate and so serious an epoch. I humbly ask pardon from all those, whom I have hurt, harmed or discomforted by word or deed.
I ask those, whose affair it is, not to bother any monuments to my memory. It is sufficient, that my poor remains are buried in a sacred place, the more hidden the better. It is not necessary that I ask for prayers for my soul. I know, how many prayers are the custom of the Apostolic See, and the piety of the faithful, for every Pope who dies.
Nor is it necessary that I leave a “spiritual testament” as so many zealous prelates in praiseworthy fashion used to do. The numerous writings and speeches which I published or delivered while executing my office, suffice, for whoever might like to know my thoughts on different questions of religion and ethics.
Having said this, I name as my universal heir the Holy Apostolic See, from which I have received so much as from a loving mother
May 15, 1956
Read more about this topic: Testament Of Pope Pius XII
Famous quotes containing the word text:
“I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)