Papstbruden.jpgOr that is more or less what the papstbruder told a German newspaper. Bild has the details on what Joseph’s protective older brother said in the interview. (Georg is three years older; a sister, Maria, died in the early 1990s.)

“He doesn’t need me to defend him. But it angers me how unjust and badly informed the people who are attacking him are,” Georg Ratzinger told German newspaper Leipziger Volkszeitung. He finds the harsh criticism the Pope has received from people in his native Germany, as well as from the rest of the world, unjust: “We always speak about an informed society, when in reality it is uninformed.”

Georg said he and his brother, Joseph, er, Benedikt, speak on the phone but don’t discuss the scandal: “We usually talk about personal things.”
Georg Ratzinger was especially incensed at German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s criticism of the pontiff’s rehabilitation of the four SSPX Traditonalist bishops, one of whom is an open Holocaust denier:

“I always saw her as a rational woman. But perhaps at the moment she is under pressure to say something irrational.”

Well, she’s not the only one in Germany saying such things. Check out this piece in Der Spiegel (English version), “Losing Touch: A German Pope Disgraces the Catholic Church.” Or this one, “The Pope Has Lost His Magic.” The lede: “The scandal surrounding Bishop Williamson has brought the honeymoon between Germans and their pope to an abrupt end. The affair has done lasting damage to Benedict’s reputation and authority in his home country…”
Oy vey.

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