Pope in Print
April 6, 2007
Pope Benedict XVI continues his duties as part of the Easter celebrations on Good Friday by presiding over the "celebration of the Passion" at St. Peter's Basilica before proceeding to the Coliseum in central Rome, where he will mark the traditional Stations of the Cross.
The pope opened Easter celebrations on Holy Thursday with a mass in St. Peter's Basilica before performing the ceremony of the washing of feet at Rome's Basilica San Giovanni in Laterano. For Christians, the washing of the feet recalls Christ's last supper with his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion.
The pope will return to St. Peter's for an Easter vigil on Saturday evening and will celebrate Easter Mass on Sunday in St. Peter's Square.
The Vatican chose the beginning of the Easter celebrations to announce that the first volume of a work on Jesus written by the pope will be published this month on the Benedict’s 80th birthday.
The papal state announced Wednesday that "Jesus of Nazareth" would be the first of two volumes that covers the period between Jesus’ baptism to the Transfiguration which the gospels describe as the moment Jesus spoke with Moses and Elijah, and is called "Son" by God.
Pope publishes research on Jesus
Benedict, a respected theologian, explains in the preface which was published last year, that the book "is absolutely not a master's thesis but merely the expression of my personal research into the face of the Lord."
He said he began writing the book in the summer of 2003 when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and that he has continued work on it during "all (his) free time" since being elected pope in April 2005.
The book will be released simultaneously in Italy, Germany and Poland. A special press conference will also be held at the Vatican on the day by Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, the archbishop of Vienna.
Extracts of the book were carried by the Italian Corriere della Sera daily on Wednesday and are due out in Germany in Thursday's edition of Die Zeit ahead of the April 16 launch date.
In the book, the pope sees the biblical account of the Samaritan who rescues and cares for a stranger who has been robbed and beaten while on his way to Jericho as a metaphor for today’s "globalized society" and one that should teach modern-day Catholics to care for their neighbors, whether a drug addict or an African whose country has been "looted and robbed" by colonialists and "raped and pillaged" materially and spiritually by Western "lifestyle."
"Is it not true that man ... during the full course of his history, finds himself alienated, mangled, abused?" the pope writes.
He also criticizes Karl Marx for having failed to understand the alienation of man, despite having railed against it, since "he only argues his case in material terms."
"Karl Marx describes man's alienation in a drastic way; although by limiting his reasoning to the material sphere he fails to reach the true depths of alienation, he nevertheless provides a clear image of the man who falls victim to the robbers," the pope writes.