Benedict XVI: pontiff and cat lover
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In one of a flurry of stories about Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to the U.S., the New York Times highlighted the pontiff’s lifelong love of cats:
Along with an enormous entourage and a message of peace, the Pope brought with him to the United States a lifelong love of cats. Benedict’s kindness toward the strays of Rome is already the stuff of Vatican legend. His house in Germany, its garden guarded by a cat statue, was filled with cats when Benedict lived there full time before he was posted to the Vatican in 1982. And Benedict is, without a doubt, the first pope to have had an authorized biography of him written by a cat — Chico, a ginger tabby who lives across the road from Benedict’s old house in Germany. NYT
The book is called ‘Joseph and Chico: The Life of Pope Benedict XVI as Told by a Cat,’ a reference to when the future pope was known as Joseph Ratzinger. Benedict also has encountered a hang-up or two over his pets: He was told he could not bring his two cats when he moved into the papal quarters. Rome’s animal rights commissioner urged the Vatican to “give the two papal cats access to the Apostolic Palace,’ according to the New York Times.
-- Tony Barboza
