According to Wikipedia, Church records since 1295 show that only two popes have lived beyond age 87 – Leo XIII, elected at age 67 in 1878, who died at age 93
in 1903; and Clement XII, elected at age 78 in 1730 , who died 60 days short of his 88th birthday in 1750. Benedict XVI would have been the first pope to reach
age 90 after Leo XIII... My thanks to Beatrice and her site for leading me to this item.
Mons. Gaenswein says Benedict XVI
will have a small birthday celebration
with about 50 guests on Easter Monday
by Barbara Just
Translated from
Katholisches.de
April 3, 2017
Benedict XVI turns 90 on Easter Sunday. His private secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein has revealed HOW the German emeritus pope will celebrate it.
In 2012 when he turned 85, he was still Pope, which prompted major festive initiatives from his Bavarian countrymen. His home diocese of Munich-Freising had a very special gift for him that summer. In August, A special train with at least a thousand costumed folk groups, Alpine guards, musicians and pilgrims left Bavaria to greet ‘their pope’ at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, and the Alban hills resounded with their celebratory yodeling and the obligatory gun salute from the Alpine guards.
Five years later, the Bavarians have not forgotten their Pope, now emeritus. But their greeting in Rome will be on a far smaller scale. Bavarian provincial leader Karl Steininger will lead a small delegation of 30 Alpine Guards and musicians to Rome in order to greet Benedict XVI on Easter Monday. Sources have told this newspaper that Bavarian minister President Horst Seehofer and his wife Karin will also be there to greet the pope.
Benedict’s closest coworker, Mons. Georg Gänswein, told Catholic Radio Horeb that there will be a ‘small celebration’ on Easter Monday with about 50 invited guests from Bavaria and Rome. The
Mittelbayerischer Zeitung says that the Mayor of Pentling, where Jospeh Ratzinger’s private residence was located [now a museum-conference center for the Institut Papst Benedikt XVI based in Regensburg], will be traveling to Rome, but not Mobns. Rudolf Voderholzer, Bishop of Regensburg.
Meanwhile, the dioceses of Bavaria have called on all the pastors and priests to offer prayers for Benedict XVI on Easter Sunday.
If his health permits, the emeritus pope’s brother, Mons. Georg Ratzigner, is expected to come to Rome for the occasion. Of course, he has always said that in the Ratzinger family, birthdays were not as important as the name days which were celebrated by preference. "It reminds us of our baptism and of the saint for whom we are named and who is supposed to inspire our lives”, he once told KNA.
The Katholischen Akademie of Bavaria will mark the occasion with a two-day conference in Munich on the Christian status of Europe today. The event is sponsored by the Institut Papst Benedikt XVI, the Stiftung Joseph Ratzinger-Benedikt XVI (the foundation that is the formal structure for the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis) and the Fondazione Vaticana Joseph Ratzigner-Benedetto XVI.
The topic is, of course, something that was always dear to the emeritus pope. His Schuelerkreis also discussed it at their last August seminar.
Resource persons will include the German Vice President Johannes Singhammer and former German constitutional judge Udo di Fabio; Gottfried Locher, president of the Association of Evangelical Churches in Europe; and Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich-Freising. Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, was also supposed to speak, but he had to withdraw because the dates fall on Pope Francis’s visit to Egypt.
But Koch will be present in Passau – the diocese in which Joseph Ratzinger was born – for a May 26-27 celebration in honor of Benedict XVI. He will speak about Joseph Ratzinger as “Co-worker for the truth and witness to God’s love”. Theologian Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, a longtime Ratzinger friend, will speak about the breadth of Ratzingerian thought from his early exposure to St. Augustine to the present. Peter Seewald, with whom Benedict XVI shared his ‘Last Conversations’, published last year, will also be at the Passau event.
The Institut Papst Benedikt XVI has planned a small publishing surprise. On Monday, April 10, it will publish the oldest hitherto unpublished text by Joseph Ratzinger – his 1947 translation to German of Thomas Aquinas’s ‘Quaestio de caritate’
[which the 20-year-old seminarian did at the suggestion of his then mentor, Fr. Alfred Laepple].
When Mons. Gaenswein speaks these days, he understandably has to toe the official Vatican line because he is a Curial official, beholden to the pope (even if this pope did not name him to his position, he did keep him there where Benedict XVI had named him). He allowed himself great latitude in articulating his two popes/dual papacy hypothesis last year, but that's not what he is saying now. As to the relationship between the emeritus pope and his successor, what would have been Andreas Englisch's interest in publicly postulating that all is not as it seems???
GG goes back on his 'two popes' hypothesis,
says relations between B16 and his successor are just fine,
and that talk about a gay lobby was always exaggerated
by ANDREA TORNIELLI
From the English service of
VATICAN INSIDER
April 6, 2017
Benedict XVI’s ninetieth birthday is approaching and Monsignor Georg Gänswein, Prefect of the Papal Household and his private secretary, denies all the rumors and recent new talk about alleged pressure that led Joseph Ratzinger to resign.
Gänswein was interviewed on Matrix, an Italian late night TV show, which aired on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.
The Secretary of the Pope Emeritus responded to questions from Vatican journalist, Fabio Marchese, on the rumors about alleged pressure from the US government under President Barack Obama to push for Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation. Rumors and plots recently relaunched in some articles and interviews, from which Pope Ratzinger ended up emerging as a weak pushover.
“It’s not true, it is invented, it is a groundless statement", Don Georg said. "His renunciation was a free decision, well thought out, as well as prayed over. The things I have read recently are invented and not true. Pope Benedict is not a person who gives into pressure. Quite the contrary. When there were challenges, when both the doctrine and the people of God had to be defended, he was the one who behaved in an exemplary way: he did not flee in front of the wolves, but he resisted, and this would never have been a reason to leave the pontificate and renounce.”
In the interview, Gänswein also talks about the relationship between Francis and his predecessor: “Relations are very cordial, very good, they visit and call each other, they talk. It is clear: Pope Francis is the successor of Peter. Pope Benedict was the Pope, he renounced and now he has retired to pray. To pray means to help his successor and the Church, because the Church is not governed only by words and decisions, but also with prayer and suffering. And that is what he is doing now. There is no misunderstanding. If there are different interpretations, sometimes even a bit mischievous, this... this is life, it is the world and it is the Church. I see no confusion. I see sometimes some nostalgia and some misunderstanding; however,
I do not perceive any confusion about the roles, about who is Pope.“
[As there ought never to be, or to have been!]
The secretary of Benedict XVI also answered a question about the “gay lobby” in the Vatican. “I don’t think the gay lobby is a power lobby - he said – there was an attempt to put things right and to give the necessary response.” But “the importance of this group has been exaggerated; an answer and a solution were given at the time. Speaking of power lobby is not only exaggerated, but a hundred times exaggerated."
Andrea Tornielli has, of course, a vested interest in propagating Mons. Gaenswein's affirmations of the official line.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/04/2017 00:37]