BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Round table discussion on Pope's books
at the Frankfurt Book Fair
Translated from
the Italian service of



FRANKFURT, Oct. 15 (ZENIT.org) - The conspicuous sale of books written by Pope Benedict XVI, before and after he became Pope, prove that the Pope is "not only a boon for Cathholic publishing houses" but has also managed to sell very well in general bookstores.

This came up Thursday morning at the annual monthlong Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany - world's largest - during a roundtable discussion entitled "The contribution of publishing houses in the promotion and distribution of the work of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI", organized by the Vatican publishing house (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, LEV).

Presentations were made by Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Costa, Director of LEV; Dr. Burkhard Menke, of the Herder publishing house (publisher in Germany of Joseph Ratzinger's Complete Works); Dr. Paul K. Henderson, Publishing Director of the United States Catholic Bishops’ Conference; and Prof. Pierluca Azzaro, Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan (Italy). Moderator was Prof. Fr. Edmondo A. Caruana, LEV publishing manager.

Azzaro said, "There are now 178 book titles by Joseph Ratzinger/. Benedict XVI available in Italian bookstores, published by 27 different houses, most of them Catholic".

"Of these titles, 22 were published between 1971-2004, that is, before he was elected Pope," he continued. "Of the 156 titles published since then, 100 have to do directly with his Magisterium, and the rest are from his work as university professor, archbishop adn cardinal."

Azzaro cited the encyclical Spe salvi issued November 30, 2007, which in only two months, sold out its first printing of 1.2 million copies."

Caritas in Veritate issued on June 29, 2009, also quickly sold out its first printing of 600,000 and in its first month, led the best-seller lists in Italy, selling better than Italian and international titles.

Azzaro said that all in all, the regular Ratzinger-Benedict books averaged print orders of 15,000-20,000 copies each, and in the past year, they represented 26.7% of all books sold by Italian publishers.

But he said "the most significant data is something else. Not only has Benedict XVI driven book sales for Catholic publishing houses, but even in the so-called 'secular bookstores."

Azzaro said these data show "we live at a time when, perhaps more than ever, man is proclaiming his vital need to enter into a relationship with the Transcendent, with the Eternal, and that this need goes far beyond the Christian and Catholic world".

"The Pope respnds to this challenge in the most authentic and therefore most effective way possible," Azzaro underscored. "He has placed at the center of his Magisterium the Creator's love for his crature, Jesus's immneasurable love for man".

Speaking about the situation in the United States, Paul Henderson said that "one of the principal objectives of American publishing houses is to propose new ideas".

"When Joseph Ratzinger was a professor and then the cardinal in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, his work as a great theologian were focused on the defense of the faith from the theological and liturgical points of view."

"Today," he said, "Benedict XVI is not casting his own light but reflecting the light of Christ. America's readers like his Magisterium - the polls show it - because as Universal Pastor, he shows the faithful in a credible and convincing way how to get to the faith in the new world of the 21st century".

For his part, the German publisher Menke said, "When Ratzinger was a professor and then Archbishop of Munich, he was best known in Germany at the scientific level, as a great theologian. It was the puublishing houses that urged him to write spiritual books for the simple believer - and that disclosed his enormous spiritual force, which had been rather hidden until then".

However, he also warned that "Today, we should guard against publishing too many titles by the Pope that sound similar to each other."

"The Pope writes books of optimal quality, which demosntrate that a good book remains irreplaceable as an instrument for feeding the spirit," he said.

The Vatican Publishing House offers more than fifty new titles at its booth in Frankfurt and will meet several publishers in order to present editorial rights and discuss future projects, besides the diffusion of rights all over the world.