BOOK ON BENEDICT XVI FOR THE SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS PONTIFICATE

Vatican City, 24 April 2012 (VIS) - The "Osservatore Romano" and the Italian newspaper "Il Sole e 24 Ore" are paying homage to the Holy Father for the seventh anniversary of his election with a book entitled "Benedict XVI, Theologian and Pontiff". The volume is being distributed with today's edition of "Il Sole e 24 Ore" and will shortly be available in digital format on the newspaper’s website, with addition multimedia content and English and Spanish translations. The Spanish newspaper "La Razon" will place the book on its own website on 26 April.

In the prologue to the work Giovanni Maria Vian, director of the "Osservatore Romano", explains that, for the Holy Father's eighty-fifth birthday and the beginning of the eighth year of his pontificate, it was decided to publish a book bringing together a number of little-known texts on the figure of Benedict XVI. These include a dialogue on secularism and religion between the philosopher Armando Massarenti and the journalist Giuliano Ferrara, some suggestions for reading the works of Joseph Ratzinger by the historiographer Lucetta Scaraffia, and a chronological summary of the life of "the theologian who became pontiff".

This initiative, Vian writes, "aims above all to contribute to an understanding of the person and works of an intellectual who has dedicated, and continues to dedicate his life to the tireless search for truth, engaging in continuous dialogue between faith and reason, and using a language accessible to everyone".