Ready to be friends again?
Could a reconciliation with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI be on the cards for Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff during his upcoming visit to Rome? Despite an early friendship in Munich, where Boff was a student, the two fell out when then Cardinal Ratzinger, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, summoned Boff to Rome and censured his book, Church: Charism and Power, over doctrinal issues. “I had to sit on the same chair as Galileo Galilei,” Boff said in an interview with German website katholisch.de. Benedict has nevertheless always told journalists that Boff is a devout theologian who would one day return to the Church. Boff, who has been invited to Rome by Pope Francis, said he hoped
to be reconciled to Benedict and to embrace him. The date for the visit has yet to be announced.