Benedict XVI was pope when I began to learn more about Catholicism a few years later, and he was pope when I was received into the Catholic Church last year.

The proceedings of the last few weeks, then, have been novel, exciting and a bit terrifying for me in a way which they may not have been for many other Catholics who remember the conclave and election of 2005. My hopes were certainly not dashed: Pope Francis already promises to be a champion of the afflicted and disenfranchised, of those whom society has trampled and left alone in poverty and disease. Such a ministry is one sorely needed by the Church as was — and is — Benedict’s efforts towards liturgical reform and a heightened reverence in worship.

In a way, this election was also saddening for me. Benedict has long been very close to my heart. As a member of one of the ordinariates for former Anglicans, I have always felt a special gratitude towards this holy man who went to such great pains to welcome an initially tiny number of Anglicans into the Church, in such a way that they could bring their traditions with them. It was a supreme act of compassion, a virtue which was always at the core of any of Benedict’s numerous ecumenical gestures. In reaching out to Anglicans, he gave us a model for how we should in turn reach out to other Protestants and non-believers: with compassion, accommodation and gentleness.

I find it personally meaningful that Pope Francis has come into office so close to the beginning of Holy Week. Lent is a time for re-assessing our relationship with God and further orienting ourselves to His will in prayer and fasting, and one might say that in his concern for reverence and beauty in the celebration of the liturgy, Benedict led the entire Catholic Church through a kind of “ecclesiastical Lent,” calling all of us to a proper orientation and relationship to Christ in our worship.

Lent always culminates with the joy of Easter, and with the Resurrection comes the promise of our own participation in the divine nature. We are all called to be holy as Christ is holy. Pope Francis is already showing us just how we are to do that. Once we have oriented ourselves properly to God, as Benedict has shown us, we must see the inherent dignity of every human being. We must care for the downtrodden and oppressed, welcoming them into the Church just as Christ gave Himself up for sinners and opened wide the Kingdom of Heaven for us.

(Candy, 21, is a third-year English student at the University of Ottawa.)