Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI told Catholics to “stand firm in the faith” in his final message to the faithful.

The Vatican published the late pope’s spiritual testament shortly after his death on Saturday. In it, Benedict thanked his family, friends, and God for the blessings of his life, and asked forgiveness from anyone whom he had wronged. He then urged believers to stand strong in the faith, even in the face of philosophical and scientific opposition.

“If in this late hour of my life I look back at the decades I have been through, first I see how many reasons I have to give thanks,” Benedict wrote. “First and foremost I thank God himself, the giver of every good gift, who gave me life and guided me through various confusing times; always picking me up whenever I began to slip and always giving me again the light of his face. In retrospect I see and understand that even the dark and tiring stretches of this journey were for my salvation and that it was in them that He guided me well.”

He went on to thank his parents for providing him with a loving home and role models for his faith; he also thanked his brother and sister for caring for and guiding him through his life. He also thanked his friends, colleagues, and former students. He thanked God for the beauty of his home under the Bavarian Alps, and all the beauty he experienced on his travels and in Rome and Italy. He then asked for forgiveness from any people he had wronged during his life.

Benedict then instructed Catholics to remain true to the faith in the face of opposition from science and philosophy. “Stand firm in the faith!” he wrote. “Do not let yourselves be confused! It often seems that science — the natural sciences on the one hand and historical research (especially exegesis of Sacred Scripture) on the other — are able to offer irrefutable results at odds with the Catholic faith. I have experienced the transformations of the natural sciences since long ago and have been able to see how, on the contrary, apparent certainties against the faith have vanished, proving to be not science, but philosophical interpretations only apparently pertaining to science.” He also noted that the sciences help to better define the parameters of faith.

“It is now sixty years that I have been accompanying the journey of Theology, particularly of the Biblical Sciences, and with the succession of different generations I have seen theses that seemed unshakable collapse, proving to be mere hypotheses,” the pope added, using liberalism, existentialism, and Marxism as examples of philosophies that have come and gone.

“I saw and see how out of the tangle of assumptions the reasonableness of faith emerged and emerges again. Jesus Christ is truly the way, the truth and the life — and the Church, with all its insufficiencies, is truly His body,” he said.

A spiritual testament is a document that is written for the faithful by the pope — and is only to be published after his death. The late Pope Emeritus’s spiritual testament was written in 2006, just over a year after he was elected to the papacy.

Also on Saturday, Benedict’s secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, revealed that the Pope’s final words were “Lord, I love you,” a phrase reminiscent of St. Peter’s confession to Jesus in the Bible.

Oscar-winning actress Mira Sorvino (“Mighty Aphrodite,” 1995) appeared to have a minor meltdown over what she viewed as a lack of American progress — and the continuation of several “hideous wrongs” — heading into the new year.

Sorvino shared her frustrations in a couple of tweets posted on Friday, just before 2022 came to a close over the weekend — and she claimed that, among other issues, Americans had failed to eradicate bigotry and anti-Semitism.

“Does anyone else feel shellshocked hideous wrongs of our nation’s past we thought we’d progressed beyond’ve found footing as pseudo-defensible positions: Bigotry, slavery, white supremacy, colonialism, anti-semitism, hatred of women, lgbtqia folk & migrants-as tho they were legit?” Sorvino asked, complaining that she had thought that America had progressed only to find that certain wrongs were not only being continued but defended.

We think we are on this inexorable climb to progress, growth, equality, only to realize we are only 1 degree away from Auschwitz, or George Washington’s thousands of slaves, the genocide of millions of Native Americans, or the justification of Harvey Weinstein’s rapes…

— Mira Sorvino (@MiraSorvino) December 31, 2022

“We think we are on this inexorable climb to progress, growth, equality, only to realize we are only 1 degree away from Auschwitz, or George Washington’s thousands of slaves, the genocide of millions of Native Americans, or the justification of Harvey Weinstein’s rapes …” Sorvino continued.

The actress suggested that the United States was somehow “1 degree away” from the 1.1 million Jews, Poles, and gypsies killed at Auschwitz — the deadliest of the Nazi concentration camps — where some 85% of the men, women, and children who passed through its gates were systematically exterminated.

She also offered comparisons to the killing of Native Americans in the name of colonization — some of whom died of diseases that crossed over from Europe with explorers and colonists alike — and claimed that George Washington owned “thousands of slaves”  when historical records suggest that number was closer to 125.

Sorvino’s final comparison took a personal turn, as she suggested the people allowing bigotry and other “hideous wrongs” to continue were no different than those who justified disgraced Hollywood producer “Harvey Weinstein’s rapes.”

The “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” star was one of the first to speak out against Weinstein, claiming that he had made advances toward her — and that her refusal to accommodate his wishes had led to her career being stifled.

“It’s very triggering and re-traumatizing for me,” she told KTLA during the now-convicted rapist’s most recent trial. “I find it horrific that his defense is using these outdated tropes, you know, slut shaming and saying that it was a consensual transactional casting couch. He was a sexual predator of epic proportions, a very violent assault. I personally know people who have been raped by him, and there was nothing consensual about it.”