(ZENIT News / Rome, 08.02.2024).- The book “The Successor. My Memories of Benedict XVI” is a first-person account of the unprecedented coexistence, for almost a decade, of two Popes, Benedict XVI and Francis, which also addresses controversies and difficulties that marked them.
“Benedict and I had a very profound relationship, I want this to be known without intermediaries. He was a man who had the courage to resisgn and, from that moment, he continued to accompany the Church and his Successor,” says Pope Francis.
In the book, the Argentine Pontiff answers the questions of Spanish Vatican expert [“Vaticanist”] Javier Martinez Brocal, and reveals important aspects of the years he spent first with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and then with Benedict XVI.
“Sometimes I brought up a topic, sometimes Benedict did so. I’m worried about this subject,” one said to the other. We talked about everything, very freely. When I posed a difficulty to him, he responded: ‘Well, you also have to take into account this and that.’ He always broadened the perspective. He had the capacity to broaden the perspective to help me take a good decision. He never said: “I don’t agree.” I remember him saying: ‘This is good. But we must also consider this other element . . . ‘ He always broadened the perspective.”
