GERMANY
Washington Post
German journalist says Pope Benedict XVI talked last August of diminishing strength
By Associated Press,
updated: Saturday, February 16
BERLIN — Pope Benedict XVI said last August that his strength was diminishing and “not much more” could be expected from him as pontiff, according to a German journalist who interviewed him for a 2010 book in which Benedict said popes should in some circumstances consider resigning.
Journalist Peter Seewald recalled in an article for German weekly Focus published Saturday asking Benedict during a meeting last August at the pontiff’s summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, what more could be expected of him and his papacy. …
Seewald said Benedict replied: “From me? From me, not much more. I am an old man and my strength is running out. And I think what I have done is enough.”
In Saturday’s article, Seewald recalled asking the pope in August how badly the scandal over leaks of papal documents, in which the pope’s ex-butler was convicted of aggravated theft, had affected him.
It “is not as though I were somehow falling into a kind of desperation or world-weariness — it is simply incomprehensible to me,” Benedict said, according to Seewald.
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