Pope Benedict XVI has his 85th birthday today in the Vatican celebrated in the company of Bavarian hundred and fifty guests, including bishops, political leaders, his older brother Georg and representatives of the Jewish and Protestant communities in Bavaria, where the Pope on 16 april 1927 was born as Joseph Ratzinger Aloisius.
© AFP.
© epa.
Benedict began the day with a Mass in which he said that the end of his life in sight and that he does not know what lies ahead. “But I know that the light of God’s presence and that his light is stronger than any darkness whatsoever,” the Pope said.
Later, ten children in Bavarian costume danced in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican and Benedict played a Bavarian band a song that the pope and his brother and sister in their youth sang, accompanied by their father on zither. Benedict expressed his emotion and said that those present at different stages in his life represented. About the Jewish community in Bavaria, he said that him closer to the Jewish people had brought.
It’s Thursday seven years since Benedict became pope. Rumors about a possible resignation because of his advanced age and declining health by the Pope to the realm of fables.
Pope Benedict received congratulations from among others the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. One of the gifts he received was a book in which twenty to prominent Germans shed light on the pope. One of them is former footballer Franz Beckenbauer, who reminisces about a meeting that he was a few months before the World Cup of 2006 the Pope had. The two were not in agreement about the form in which the German team wrong. The Pope had every confidence in the team, Beckenbauer less. Germany was third.