Pope Emeritus Benedict remembered in New York

Admirers of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in the United States remembered the late pontiff warmly for his theological prowess and devotion to traditional doctrine.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, held a special Mass for Benedict at St. Patrick's Cathedral; its bells tolled 95 times before the Mass - reflecting Benedict's age when he died.

"We'll miss him very much. We are sad, but we also praise Almighty God for the gift that he was his 96 years, his, piety, his humility, his towering intellect," Dolan said.

Some U.S. Catholics, on learning of his death Saturday, recalled him as an obstacle to progress in combating clergy sex abuse and expanding the role of women in the church.

Professor Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the University of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, depicted Benedict as “a man of unwavering faith, deep conviction and towering intellect,” yet added that he left “a complicated legacy.”

She noted that last February, following a report that implicated him in the cover-up of sexual abuse during the years he served as Archbishop of Munich, Benedict "acknowledged his failure to act decisively at times in confronting sexual abusers.”