Unless there are any last minute surprises, this
year for the first time ever, Ratzinger’s former students will be
meeting in Castel Gandolfo without their old teacher, the
theologian-turned-Pope, Joseph Ratzinger.
The Circle’s coordinator, Fr. Stephan Otto Horn (Ratzinger’s assistant at Regensburg University between 1971 and 1977 and currently Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Passau) will lead this year’s meeting taking over from the Pope Emeritus who will be staying in the Vatican. The meeting runs from 29 August to 2 September.
The topic Ratzinger chose for the meeting is: “The question of God in the context of secularisation”. He apparently also chose the meeting’s speaker, the French historian and philosopher, Rémi Brague, formerly a professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris and at the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität in Munich.
“Faith in modern society” is the topic chosen to start off the Circle’s discussion. The Ratzinger Schulerkreis was established in 1978, after Ratzinger was appointed Archbishop of Freising and Munich. It was intended as a continuation of a period of research, culminating in a week-long summer residential and community course involving theological reflection and collective prayer.
At least 30 or so theologians from countries all across the world – over half of them from Austria and Germany, but also from France, Italy, Greece, Romania, Chile, Mexico, the U.S. and Africa - will be attending the Ratzinger Schulerkreis, most notably the Dominican Friar and Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn. They all students of Ratzingerian theology and are coordinated by the theologian Michaela Hastatter, who teaches Pastoral Theology at the University of Freiburg.
No official confirmation has been given of a potential visit by participants to Benedict XVI. Although the Pope Emeritus continues to live a secluded life in the Mater Ecclesiae monastery, he has met with a number of people, including a Bavarian delegation led by the mayor of Freising, Tobias Eschenbacher who visited him last spring. Ratzinger, who has strong ties with his homeland, was deeply moved by the visit.