"Mary has always been essential to the equilibrium of the Faith"

Benedict XVI has testified publicly to his Marian devotion on many occasions. In an interview with Vittorio Messori in 1985, he explained the importance of Mary and the need for an "incarnate" faith, which reconciles "reason with the reasons of the heart". Here are some excerpts:

“If the place occupied by Mary has been essential to the equilibrium of the Faith, today it is urgent, as in few other epochs of Church history, to rediscover that place.”

“The correct Marian devotion guarantees to Faith the coexistence of indispensable ‘reason’ with the equally indispensable ‘reason of the heart’, as Pascal would say. For the Church, man is neither mere reason nor mere feeling, he is the unity of these two dimensions. The head must reflect with lucidity, but the heart must be able to feel warmth: devotion to Mary (which ‘avoids every false exaggeration on the one hand, and excessive narrow-mindedness in the contemplation of the surpassing dignity of the Mother of God on the other’, as the Council urges) thus assures the Faith its full human dimension.”

“Mary is ‘figure’, ‘image’, and ‘model’ of the Church. Beholding her, the Church is shielded against the aforementioned masculinized model that views her as an instrument for a program of social-political action. (...) If Mary no longer finds a place in many theologies and ecclesiologies, the reason is obvious: they have reduced faith to an abstraction. And an abstraction doesn’t need a Mother.”

“With her destiny, which is at one and the same time that of Virgin and Mother, Mary continues to project a light upon that which the Creator intended for women in every age, ours included, or, better said, perhaps precisely in our time, in which - as we know - the very essence of femininity is threatened. Through her virginity and her motherhood, the mystery of woman receives a very lofty destiny from which she cannot be torn away.”

“As a creature of courage and obedience she was and is still an example to which every Christian - man and woman, can and should look.”

Excerpt from The Ratzinger Report, An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church

By Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, Vittorio Messori · 1985