Senior church figures in Ireland have paid tribute following the passing of former Pope Benedict XVI.
Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin will attend the Funeral Mass of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in the Vatican.
The Primate of All Ireland will be at the service in his capacity as president of the Irish Catholic Bishop's Conference on January 5.
Vice-President and Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell will also travel to the city state.
Benedict died at his Vatican residence, aged 95, almost a decade after he stood down because of ailing health, it was announced on Saturday.
A statement from Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said: "With pain I inform that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died today at 9.34 in the Mater Ecclesia Monastery in the Vatican.”
Archbishop Martin said he would pray for the former pontiff, “asking God to forgive his sins and human failings, while rewarding his generous service and complete dedication to the Gospel and to the Church”.
He hailed Benedict as “a person of deep spirituality and prayer, an outstanding apostle of Christ” who had “great capacity to listen combined with a personal, discreet charm”.
He also recalled his first meeting with the then pope in 2009 on a visit to the Vatican as Executive Secretary to the Irish Bishops’ Conference, where he said he noted Benedict’s “characteristic humility and gentleness”.
“I found him to be calm and softly spoken, kindly and personable, and genuinely interested in the Church in Ireland,” he said. “Having met the Irish bishops in Rome in February 2010, he issued a unique Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland expressing profound sorrow for those grievously wounded by abuse in the Church.
"The then pope called for urgent action to address the legacy of abuse which, he said, has had ‘such tragic consequences in the lives of victims and their families’, and which has ‘obscured the light of the Gospel to a degree that not even centuries of persecution succeeded in doing.’”
Irish President Michael D Higgins praised the former pope’s “steadfast interest in peace in Northern Ireland”, while Archbishop Martin recalled how Benedict “followed closely and prayerfully” the peace process.
Mr Higgins said that at a time of the return of war on the European continent, Benedict will be remembered “for his untiring efforts to find a common path in promoting peace and goodwill throughout the world”.
Archbishop Martin also noted his early introduction to the Irish church, through his friendship with Archbishop Kevin McNamara of Dublin.
"He often admired the huge contribution of generations of Irish men and women to the Church, and to humanity, and he took a special interest in the work of early Celtic missionaries like Saint Columbanus to the spread the Gospel in Europe and to Europe’s spiritual identity,” Archbishop Martin continued.
"His papacy was marked by a commitment to dialogue between faith and reason, between the Church and the modern world, and to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, as evidenced on his significant apostolic journey to the United Kingdom in 2010.”
Archbishop Noel Treanor, Apostolic Administrator of Down and Connor, also expressed his deep sadness at the news.
He said the late pontiff would he remembered fondly for his “historic” visit to the UK in 2010.
Archbishop Treanor added: “Since his resignation in February 2013, Pope Benedict has sought to serve the church through a life dedicated to prayer. In more recent years, Pope Benedict has also carried the personal cross of human suffering and illness.
“Together with parishioners and clergy of the Diocese of Down and Connor, I pray that the Lord will grant him eternal rest and welcome him into the eternal light and peace of God’s Heavenly kingdom.”
The Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Right Reverend Dr John Kirkpatrick, reached out to Archbishop Martin to offer his condolences.
Dr Kirkpatrick said, “Many people across the island of Ireland today will be greatly saddened by the news of the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict.
"In making contact with Archbishop Eamon I wanted to pass on my sympathy and express the condolences of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland as we acknowledge the grief being felt by so many of our Roman Catholic neighbours at this particular time.”
Church of Ireland Archbishop John McDowell, the Primate of All Ireland, said: “Pope Benedict was manifestly a man of deep spiritual insight combined with a capacity for focused and articulate theological expression. During his life, he combined the role of churchman and theologian with energy, leaving as a legacy a substantive body of published work that stands testament to a Christian scholar of great intelligence and learning.
“His loss will be felt very keenly throughout the Catholic world and my prayers in the coming weeks will be for all who are bereaved and diminished by the passing of a great man and a humble disciple of our common Lord, especially my brothers and sisters in Christ on the island of Ireland.”
Benedict stunned the world on February 11 2013 when he announced that he no longer had the strength to run the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church that he had steered for eight years through scandal and indifference.
His dramatic decision paved the way for the conclave that elected Pope Francis as his successor.
The two popes then lived side-by-side in the Vatican gardens, an unprecedented arrangement that set the stage for future “popes emeritus” to do the same.
The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had never wanted to be pope, planning at age 78 to spend his final years writing in the “peace and quiet” of his native Bavaria.
Instead, he was forced to follow the footsteps of the beloved St John Paul II and run the church through the fallout of the clerical sex abuse scandal and then a second scandal that erupted when his own butler stole his personal papers and gave them to a journalist.
Being elected pope, he once said, felt like a “guillotine” had come down on him.
Nevertheless, he set about the job with a single-minded vision to rekindle the faith in a world that, he frequently lamented, seemed to think it could do without God.
“In vast areas of the world today, there is a strange forgetfulness of God,” he told one million young people gathered on a vast field for his first foreign trip as pope, to World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, in 2005. “It seems as if everything would be just the same even without him.”