Pope Benedict is dead; now only Pope Francis remains in the Vatican. And the Catholic Church is diminished by his passing, at least in a here-and-now sense. He was controversial for those who wanted the church to identify with the values of the age, and was cordially detested by liberal Catholics – I know of one progressive journalist who burst into tears at the news of his election – but in any serious audit of his life’s work, he emerges as a figure with a claim to the attention of secularists as well as Catholics.