The Vatican released Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s Spiritual Testament available to the public soon after Benedict’s death on New Year’s Eve.

Each pope creates a personal spiritual testament that is to be published after their death. Benedict’s Spiritual Testament was written on Aug. 29, 2006, when he had been pope for only one year and four months, according to Catholic News Agency.

“The great project of Pope Benedict’s life was showing forth the reasonableness of Christian faith,” Madison Bishop Donal Hying said on Twitter in giving his impressions of Benedict.

The National Catholic Register expanded on that, saying Benedict wanted the world to hear once more that faith was rational, despite scientific or philosophical approaches that may sometimes be contrary to Catholic faith. The idea Benedict persistently advocated as a priest, professor, and pope, was summed up in his decision to commit his final testament to the "reasonableness of faith," which was the focus of his entire life's work, the Register said.

"What I said earlier of my compatriots, I now say to all who were entrusted to my service in the Church: Stand firm in the faith! Do not be confused!” the testament provided by the Vatican says.

He then addressed the conflict between the Church and science.

“Often it seems as if science – on the one hand, the natural sciences; on the other, historical research (especially the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures) - has irrefutable insights to offer that are contrary to the Catholic faith,” Benedict wrote. “I have witnessed from times long past the changes in natural science and have seen how apparent certainties against the faith vanished, proving themselves not to be science but philosophical interpretations only apparently belonging to science - just as, moreover, it is in dialogue with the natural sciences that faith has learned to understand the limits of the scope of its affirmations and thus its own specificity."

Benedict passed away at the age of 95. He resigned in 2013, citing health issues. He had succeeded John Paul II as head of the Catholic Church in 2005 and was the first Pope to resign since Gregory XII's resignation in 1415, the BBC reported.

Benedict's spiritual testament is about a page long, and in it he talks about how the Church can survive in the midst of scientific contradiction.

"For 60 years now, I have accompanied the path of theology, especially biblical studies, and have seen seemingly unshakeable theses collapse with the changing generations, which turned out to be mere hypotheses: the liberal generation (Harnack, Jülicher, etc.), the existentialist generation (Bultmann, etc.), the Marxist generation,” he wrote. "I have seen, and see, how, out of the tangle of hypotheses, the reasonableness of faith has emerged and is emerging anew. Jesus Christ is truly the Way, the Truth, and the Life - and the Church, in all her shortcomings, is truly His Body."