Free Republic

She wanted to convert. She listened to Cardinal Ratzinger and died a Lutheran. Sigrid Spath was the most famous German translator in Rome. She worked in the Jesuit General House, and then in the Vatican, since the days of Paul VI and translated around 70,000 pages of documents from Italian, French, English, Spanish or Polish into German, as well as several texts by Joseph Ratzinger, as Cardinal or Pope, as he also wrote original texts in Italian. The granddaughter of a Lutheran pastor, Spath was born in Villach, Carinthia (Austria), on August 1, 1939 (that is, just one month before...

There have been some great popes whose pontificates have been practically discarded by the errors of the clerics in their entourage. This risk is also present for the pontificate of Pope Francis. In fact, there have been episodes, decisions and “bizarre outbursts” by some prelates that have been quite disturbing. I am thinking of Cardinal Maradiaga and Cardinal Braz de Aviz, who feel they are so powerful in the Vatican that they can ‘use the club’ on both the Prefect of the former Holy Office, Müller, as well as on the ‘Franciscans of the Immaculate.’ AGAINST BENEDICT The targets of...

Liberation Theology is taking over the Vatican a quarter of a century after Jean-Paul II systematically sought to stamp out the "singular heresy" in the radical parishes and dioceses of Latin America, a task carried out with dutiful efficiency by Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

08/21/2013 Ratzinger gives reason for resigning: “God told me to” During the course of a private meeting Benedict XVI said that a mystical experience led him to resign Andrea Torniellivatican city “God told me to.” This was Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s reason for stepping down from the pontificate. An anonymous individual who visited Ratzinger about a week ago gave a statement recounting what was said during the private meeting, Catholic news agency Zenit reports.  Ratzinger’s decision to stay out of the limelight still raises many questions, six months after the shock announcement of his resignation, Zenit says. One person was lucky enough...

(ANSA) - Berlin, May 8 - A colleague of retired pope Benedict XVI says the former pontiff is in failing health, according to published reports. Cardinal Joachim Meisner, archbishop of Cologne, said he was shocked at the declining health of Benedict. During a meeting between the two clerics on March 18, Meisner said he was stunned at how small Benedict had become, saying he was only half of his previous size, the German Catholic News Agency (KNA) reported. Meisner said he had initially opposed Benedict's announcement in February that he intended to resign because of declining physical and mental strength....

A victim of a paedophile priest has called for an Italian cardinal who will help elect the next Pope to step down, accusing him of covering up abuse. Francesco Zanardi says he was abused by his local priest, father Nello Giraudo, when he was a young boy and is adamant Catholic Church chiefs knew of the case but failed to act. At a press conference close to the Vatican, Mr Zanardi showed a letter dated 2003 which was written by the then Bishop of Savona in northwest Italy, Domenico Calcagno, who is now one of the 115 elector cardinals. In...

egensburg - Again, he sat in front of the TV and looked at "Joseph". This is the name Georg Ratzinger uses for his brother, who has been called Benedict XVI for almost eight years and on Wednesday had his last major appearance as Pope. Although he can no longer see so well, the 89-year-old in Regensburg wanted to see as much of the general audience as popssible of the outgoing head of the Church in St. Peter's Square. "It was very touching," the prelate said to the news agency dpa. "There was a melancholy mood." And Georg Ratzinger added reassuringly...

A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom – the report said – were being blackmailed by outsiders. The pope's spokesman declined to confirm or deny the report, which was carried by the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica. The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign – the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called "Vatileaks" affair....

BERLIN – The pope's brother, Georg Ratzinger, says the pontiff had been advised by his doctor not to take any more transatlantic trips and had been considering stepping down for months.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was elected as the successor to Pope John Paul II on April 19th 2005.On April 24th, he celebrated the Papal Inauguration Mass in St. Peter’s Square, during which he was invested with the Pallium and the Ring of the Fisherman.On May 7th he took possession of his Cathedral Church, the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran.During his Papacy Pope Benedict XVIth has undertaken 24 apostolic journeys abroad. The first was to Cologne in Germany in occasion of the 20th World Youth Day in August 2005. The most...

Georg (L) and Joseph Ratzinger during their first Mass processional in Traunstein, Germany in 1951. Photo courtesy of Ignatius Press. Marktl am Inn, Germany, Dec 21, 2012 / 04:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Christmas letter that Pope Benedict XVI wrote to Baby Jesus when he was seven years-old demonstrates his devotion to the Sacred Heart and his desire to be a priest. The letter is on display this Advent in the village of Marktl am Inn in Bavaria, where he was born. "Dear Baby Jesus, quickly come down to earth. You will bring joy to children. Also bring me...

Supporters of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of Society of St Pius X, branded the future Pope Benedict XVI and the late Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner "heretics" during the Second Vatican Council, reports The Tablet.A previously undiscovered letter written by Karl Rahner to his brother, Fr Hugo Rahner SJ, during the council in November 1963 has revealed that the French Intégristes - followers of Lefebvre - accused him and Fr Joseph Ratzinger as "heretic[s] who deny the existence of hell and are worse than Teilhardt de Chardin and the Modernists".The letter, part of an exhibition in Munich, states that Rahner consoled...

The ranking only looks at the popes elected since the year 1400, because there are no precise records that existed beforehand. This is according to Anura Guruge, who gathers papal statistics and is the creator of the web page "Popes and Papacy," on the history of the popes.The popes that were older than Benedict XVI include Innocent XII and Pius XI, who both died at 85 years old, Clement X was 86, Clement XII lived to 87, and topping the list is Leo XIII, who served as pope until he was 93.Despite being nearly 85 years old, the pontiff has...

Pope Benedict XVI in Poland 2006. Credit: Mazur. Vatican City, Feb 20, 2012 / 12:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI, at age 84, never goes to sleep before 11:00 p.m., prays the Rosary every day, gets up at 5:00 a.m. and uses a cell phone only accessible by his closest advisers.In an article published online at Europaquotidiano.it on Feb. 17, Italian journalist Aldo Maria Valli documents a day in life of the Pope, who wakes up when Vatican City “is still immersed in silence.”Valli says the Bavarian pontiff is a “typical German, a methodic man” who “likes to...

"My Brother, the Pope" praised as an "honest and very illuminating memoir"... ... by Publisher's Weekly:The first thing many people want to know when talk turns to the pope—any pope—is “What is he really like?” That curiosity is a natural reaction not only to the power and prestige of the Roman pontiff but also to the aura of mystery that seems to make him so remote as a person. So who better to provide insight into the life of the current pope, Benedict XVI, than his own brother? Georg Ratzinger is no Billy Carter, but rather a lifelong priest, like...

...There exists a clear consensus among the Fathers regarding the indissolubility of marriage. Since it derives from the will of the Lord, the Church has no authority over it. For this reason, from the outset Christian marriage was distinct from marriage in Roman society, even though in the first centuries there did not yet exist any canonical system. The Church in the time of the Fathers clearly excluded divorce and remarriage, precisely out of faithful obedience to the New Testament.... In the Imperial Church after Constantine, with the ever stronger interplay between Church and State, a greater flexibility and readiness...

In 1974, a Trabant -- an old East German car -- was chugging through the Thuringian countryside, a province in the communist German Democratic Republic.In its passenger seat sat Professor Joseph Ratzinger and at the wheel was Father Joachim Wanke, then an assistant at a local seminary -- the only one in the GDR.The two priests, writes Rainer Erice, a journalist for the German radio station Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk Thüringen (MDR), were on a harmless sightseeing tour, taking in the historic cities of Jena and Weimar. It was a moment of relaxation during Father Ratzinger's short visit to East Germany, the...

In its long struggle to grapple with sexual abuse, the Vatican often cites as a major turning point the decision in 2001 to give the office led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger the authority to cut through a morass of bureaucracy and handle abuse cases directly. The decision, in an apostolic letter from Pope John Paul II, earned Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, a reputation as the Vatican insider who most clearly recognized the threat the spreading sexual abuse scandals posed to the Roman Catholic Church. But church documents and interviews with canon lawyers and bishops cast that 2001 decision...

Attorneys for the Diocese of Norwich are trying to keep secret hundreds of documents — including a letter written to the pope when he was a cardinal — that discussed the status of a priest accused of molesting more than a dozen young girls. The letter from Bishop Michael Cote to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in April 2005 concerned "canonical processes" regarding Thomas W. Shea, a retired priest accused of molesting as many as 16 girls at 11 different parishes during a nearly 40-year career, according to court records. The letter is one of more than 600 documents that the diocese...

VATICAN CITY - Gay groups and politicians condemned Pope Benedict's number two on Wednesday for calling homosexuality a "pathology" and linking it directly to sexual abuse of children. The comments made by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone during a visit to Chile, and the controversy they caused, were splashed on mainstream Italian newspapers on Wednesday. The French foreign ministry and some Catholic blogs that support the pope also condemned the cardinal's remarks.