Seewald: Vatileaks Isn’t the Reason for the Pope’s Resignation

Munich (kath.net/KNA)  The so-called “Vatileaks” affair was clearly not the reason for the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.  This is according to the news magazine “Focus” on Saturday in reference to the German journalist Peter Seewald.  The betrayal neither threw the Pope off the rails, nor made him weary of his office.  This is what the Pontifex explained to Seewald during a one and a half hour interview in the summer residence in Castel Gandolfo in August.

The “Vatileaks” affair concerned the theft of confidential documents from the apartment of the Pope.  At the beginning of October found the butler of the Pope since 2006, a Paolo Gabriel guilty and condemned him to 18 months imprisonment.  Shortly before Christmas, Benedict XVI forgave his former assistant.

Seewald reported in Focus over several talks with the Pope.  He said on his glimpse on the betrayal of his Ex-butler:  It wasn’t so, “that I had fallen in any way under despair or world weariness.  It was simply incomprehensible.  Also when I view the person, I can not understand what he can have promised.  I can’t penetrate this psychology,” said the Pope according to Seewald.

As the author of the Pope’s Interview Book “Light of the World” wrote in Focus, it was important to the Pope, that in the deliberation of the case “in the Vatican, the independence of justice was maintained, that the monarch doesn’t say, now take him away.”

Seewald reports he had never seen Benedict before so exhausted and dejected.  With his last strength the German Pope brought the third volume of his Jesus work to and end. “My last book”, the Pope said of it.

The last meeting in the Vatican, says Seewald, was a good ten weeks before.  As to Seewald’s question “What more do you expect from your pontificate?”,  the Pontifex answered:  “From me?  Nothing much more.  I am really an old man, the power is gone.  I think that what I’ve done is sufficient.”  Seewald has written a biography about the Pope and met him for this in the last months several times.

Link to kath.net...