By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Retired Pope Benedict XVI has given
another interview to the journalist and author Peter Seewald, and a German
publisher announced it would be released worldwide Sept. 9.
Titled “Letzte Gesprache,” (which translates as “last
conversations”), the book includes an in-depth conversation with the
retired pope about the background of his resignation in 2013, said the German
publisher, Droemer Knaur.
Information about an English translation and publisher was not immediately
available.
The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, which has the
rights to an Italian newsstand edition of the book, reported July 1 that Pope
Benedict admits to Seewald that he knew of “the presence of a ‘gay lobby’
in the Vatican composed of four or five people and he says he was able to
remove their power.”
Pope Benedict also says he kept a diary during his
pontificate, but he plans to destroy it, even though he knows that historians
could find it valuable, Corriere reported.
On its website, Droemer said Pope Benedict speaks about the
priorities of his pontificate, the VatiLeaks scandal, which saw the conviction
and jailing of his butler, and about Pope Francis and the “controversial
issues” of his papacy.
Pope Benedict discusses the challenges facing the Catholic
Church today, but also looks back to memories of his family and formative
events in his life, Droemer said.
The retired pope speaks of his “surprise” when
Pope Francis was elected and his “joy” in seeing how the new pope
prays in public and is able to communicate with a crowd, Corriere reported. He
also discusses the ways in which he and Pope Francis are alike and are
different.
Before he was elected pope, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
collaborated with Seewald on two book-length interviews: “Salt of the
Earth,” published in German in 1996, and “God and the World,”
published in German in 2000. As pope, he and Seewald released “Light of
the World” in 2010.
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