Benedict XVI turns 95 as book focuses on anomaly of 2 popes
ABC News
Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI turned 95 this past weekend
VATICAN CITY -- Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI turned 95 this past weekend, a significant milestone on its own but even more given he has now been a retired pope longer than he was a reigning one.
To mark the occasion, a new book sets out to examine the current state of Vatican affairs not so much through the lens of Pope Francis’ nine-year papacy, but via Benedict’s nine-year retirement. And it isn’t pretty.
Veteran Italian commentator Massimo Franco's “The Monastery,” published in Italy on Thursday, shifts the focus of most books about the Holy See by using Benedict’s retirement home in a converted monastery in the Vatican gardens as the prism to view the unprecedented anomaly of having two popes, one reigning and one retired, living together in the Vatican.
In real-life scenes befitting the Netflix drama “The Two Popes,” the book paints a picture of two papal courts that started out on excellent terms: Francis referred to Benedict as a “wise grandfather” to whom he turned for advice, and Benedict treated Francis with the deference owed to a pope.
