Pope Benedict XVI wanted to become a librarian 13 years ago but his request to quit Vatican high office was rejected, it was revealed today.His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, threw out his request to ‘spend his last years’ as the archivist of the Vatican Secret Archives and as a librarian of the Vatican Library.
At the time the future Pope Benedict was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the prefect of the Vatican’s all-powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pope’s doctrinal enforcer.
But he found his job ‘burdensome’ and wanted to retire to academic study of ancient documents for the rest of his life.
He asked the Pope if he could step down from his trouble-shooting role and when he turned 70 on April 16 1997, a move which would have permanently removed him from Vatican politics and from the eyes of the world.
Had Pope John Paul accepted it his highly unlikely that the Bavarian-born Pontiff, who is now 83 and who will travel to Britain for a state visit next month, would ever have become pope.
The revelations were made by the incumbent librarian and archivist Cardinal Raffaele Farina in Inside the Vatican magazine.
He recalled how when he was appointed prefect of the Vatican Library in May 1997 he had a brief meeting with Cardinal Ratzinger in which he was asked his own opinion of the future pope joining the team.
‘He was asking me what I thought of his idea and what being archivist and librarian of the Holy Roman Church involved,’ said Cardinal Farina.
'When I realised what the Pope-to-be really meant … I expressed clearly how happy I and the whole staff of the library were to have him join us.’
The revelations explain previous allusions by Pope Benedict in 2007, two years after he was elected the leader of the world’s billion Roman Catholics.
He said he ‘would have liked for beloved John Paul II to permit me to devote myself to study and research into the interesting documents and materials … true masterpieces that help us to review the history of humanity and of Christianity’.
Pope Benedict said: ‘In his providential design the Lord had other plans for me … not as a passionate scholar of ancient texts but rather as a pastor who is required to encourage all the faithful to cooperate in the world's salvation, each one doing God's will wherever God places us to work.’
SIC: TCUK