Pope Benedict Last Book?

After sitting down to talk with Pope Benedict in January, Rabbi Jacob Neusner revealed to the press that the Pope told him that he had finished writing Vol. 2 of his Jesus of Nazareth, we wrote.

Now, Rabbi Neusner has let fall one more surprising detail about that private conversation: The Holy Father also mentioned that he won’t write anything else.

“Last January, when I met the Pope in Rome,” Neusner wrote over the weekend for Milan’s Corriere della Sera, “I asked him what he would write when he finished this book. Smiling, he replied, ‘Nothing else. This is my last book. I have other matters to attend to.’”

“A scholar who stops writing books won’t be called a scholar for long,” Neusner reflected. “Benedict XVI didn’t need to add, ‘After all, I’m the Pope.’ But the academic in me whispered, ‘At what a price!’”

HT Paolo Rodari