Pope Francis

Pope Francis praises retired Pope Benedict’s writings

Pope Benedict XVI waves as he leaves his final general audience in St. Peter’s Square Feb. 27, 2013. PAUL HARING | CNS

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VATICAN CITY — For more than 50 years, the writings of retired Pope Benedict XVI on the relationship between faith and politics have insisted that the measure of human freedom is the extent to which each person acknowledges being dependent on the love of God, Pope Francis wrote.

The future pope’s “direct experience of Nazi totalitarianism led him from the time he was a young academic to reflect on the limits of obedience to the state in favor of the freedom of obedience to God,” Pope Francis commented in the preface to a new book.

“Liberating Freedom: Faith and Politics in the Third Millennium” is a collection of essays written over the course of several decades, including during Pope Benedict’s eight years as pope. It is scheduled to be published in Italian by Cantagalli May 11.

The website Vatican Insider posted Pope Francis’ preface May 6 and Vatican News posted an English translation the next day. Pope Francis said that when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger worked alongside St. John Paul II, “he elaborated and proposed a Christian vision of human rights capable of questioning on a theoretical and practical level the totalitarian claim of the Marxist state and the atheist ideology on which it was based.” 

 

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