President Klaus Iohannis posted a message on Twitter on Saturday in which he said he was deeply saddened by the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and said he was with the Catholic community in these moments of “tremendous loss.”

“I am deeply saddened by the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. He left an undeniable spiritual and historical mark on us, on all of us. My thoughts are with the Catholic community in Romania and around the world in these moments of great loss. Rest in peace,” Klaus Iohannis wrote in his address, News.ro reports.

Former Pope Benedict, the first sovereign pontiff to resign in 600 years and a spokesman for conservatives seeking a more traditional Church, died on Saturday, ending an extraordinary period of two men in white living at the same time in the Vatican. Benedict, 95, died in the former monastery where he lived after his sudden resignation in 2013.

World leaders did not hesitate to express their condolences to Benedict, the first German Pope in 1,000 years.

“We mourn the death of our Bavarian pope,” said Markus Zeder, prime minister of Benedict’s native Bavaria. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Twitter that the world had lost a “formative figure of the Catholic Church”.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Maloni called Benedict “a great man that history will not forget,” and Polish President Andrzej Duda called him “one of the greatest theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said Benedict “worked with all his soul and mind for a more fraternal world.”

Britain’s King Charles said he fondly remembers meeting Benedict and recalled his “constant efforts to promote peace and goodwill towards all people and to strengthen the relationship between the global Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church”.