The real Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict...

...emerges from this interview w. Peter Seewald.  It's a must-read.

I came to know Peter Seewald through working on the EWTN feature on Pope Emeritus Benedict...he (Seewald) is a superb writer, a serious thinker, and a very well-read man who is good company. At our first meeting, over coffee in Munich, I remember him mentioning the biography of BXVI  on which he had at that stage fairly recently embarked...I realised just how much work and worry and care he was putting into it, reading and pondering on so many things.  The book will be the culmination of all his interviews and discussions and the long years of friendship which began when Seewald was a journalist on a major German newspaper, with a young family and many questions about life, God, the Church, and the true meaning of things...and it will also be the result of his own study and reflection and the spiritual journey that he has made under Benedict's gentle example.

Clare Anderson and I interviewed Peter Seewald for the first part our TV feature on Pope Benedict, which was broadcast by EWTN a couple of years ago. (The second half, filmed in Rome last May, will be broadcast this year...)

Ratzinger/Benedict is one of the great minds of our era. He will one day be hailed as a Doctor of the Church.   His role at the Second Vatican Council, his years at the CDF and his superb book(s) on the life of Christ, plus his rich theological insights - presented so readably and with such grace - have been huge gifts to the Church  and will resonate for all the years to come...and all this has come with considerable suffering, as he has been endlessly misrepresented and villified over the years, his character attacked, his motives questioned, his actions challenged in malicious and cruel ways. He's one of the Church's heroes:  all of us are in his debt.