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THE POPE'S brother, Mgr Georg Ratzinger, hopes to have lunch with his brother together with a few friends when the pontiff comes to Regensburg next week. "Perhaps we can have a short siesta after lunch and spend the rest of the day peacefully," he said in an interview with the German television station ZDF. Mgr Ratzinger said his relationship with his brother had not changed since the Pope's election last year and was as "natural and heartfelt" as ever. He added that the only regret was that his brother Joseph could no longer pop up to Bavaria from Rome to see him and he had to go down and visit him instead. Asked what it was like to have a brother coming to Bavaria not as a private person but as Pope, Mgr Ratzinger said they had not discussed the subject but he thought his brother might regret not being able to come as a private person: "There are things he misses, but he knows that his vocation as Pope has more than just a human perspective and that private matters have to take second place." A new book on Pope Benedict by his first theology teacher, colleague and longtime friend, the 91-year-old Professor Alfred Läpple, has been published in Germany in time for the Pope's visit to Bavaria, which begins today. In his portrait of the present Pope, the author describes common experiences, quotes from previously unpublished letters and traces the theological development of Joseph Ratzinger from his seminary days to now. Fr Läpple describes his theological discussions with his then pupil in detail, citing favourite philosophers (St Edith Stein's translation of Thomas Aquinas gets a particular mention) that had an influence on his thinking. Fr Läpple also examines the part that the Ratzinger family and Bavarian culture had on the Pope's religious development, and describes the attacks at Tübingen University in 1968 that made him "flee" to Regensburg. Meanwhile, the new head of the Vatican press office, Fr Federico Lombardi SJ, has said he is not the Pope's spokesman. "The Pope does a lot of speaking himself and he speaks out often, so he doesn't really need a personal spokesman," Lombardi told the Catholic News Agency. Rather, said Fr Lombardi, his job was to provide journalists with the necessary sources of information and authorised texts, and to run press conferences.  |
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