Posted on 01/08/2020 6:19:28 PM PST by marshmallow
The half-hour documentary, which aired Jan. 3 on German television, is dignified and respectful of the 92-year-old Pope Emeritus
Benedict XVI appears mentally alert but noticeably frailer and almost unable to speak in a new German television documentary providing a rare glimpse into his daily life.
In the half-hour film aired on Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian state television) on Jan. 3, the 92-year-old Pope Emeritus speaks only three times but in a barely audible voice.
“I used to have a great voice, now it doesn’t work anymore,” Benedict says in the program, which was filmed at his Mater Ecclesiae monastery residence in the Vatican.
“One sees that his strength isn’t there anymore,” his personal secretary Archbishop Georg Gänswein says in the program. “His voice is simply broken, weaker” but he adds that what is “important” to him is “good company” which “lifts his heart” and that he is “at peace with himself.”
His physical appearance has deteriorated considerably over the past couple of years: the documentary shows Benedict thanking guests at his 90th birthday celebration in 2017 with a stronger though still frail voice.
The bulk of the program, entitled “Little Bavaria in the Vatican” and filmed in September, is biographical, recalling Joseph Ratzinger’s childhood, the main events of his life and his personal preferences, interspersed with past interviews with him as cardinal and pope.
Also interviewed on the program is his 95-year-old brother, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, and Father Bruno Fink, Benedict’s secretary from 1978 to 1983, when Joseph Ratzinger was Archbishop of Munich and Freising.
Let me guess. Starts his morning with coffee and eggs and a power reading of The Communist Manifesto.
He and the Polish Saint gave what was needed at the time for the World’s freedom from communism. May others rise in their wake in all denominations,
I want to know how they got him to abdicate.
That’s my question too. What did they have on him to make him resign in favor of the communist usurper in the Vatican now?
Wrong Pope.
It's about Benedict, not Francis.
Thanks for the video. Interesting. Doctor of the Church. Why did he step down? He made mistakes, nothing serious, just bad enough to be pressured psychologically to go to his room. Evil forces make mountains out of mole hills. Sad. Benedict XVI’s speeches were always brilliant.
His sin was declaring to the church that they are to seek to save lost souls through the sharing of the Gospel and if $$ are needed to support outreach then the Church should divest its holdings to support outreach ministries.
He also made the statement that our Lord Jesus had no place to lay His head and no earthly possessions, therefore how could the Church justify its oppulence while the lost are dying and going to hell if $$ was the reason for lack of evangelizing the lost.
His bigger sin was in seeking to purge the Church of gay priests.
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