Benedict to write no more books?

From palazzoapostolico.it on Monday 19 April 2010 (My translation – including any mistakes):

Ratzinger will not write anything more

The second part of the book on Jesus of Nazareth, due to be published in the next few months, will be Benedict XVI’s last book. After this, the theologian Pope will not write anything more.

This is the most interesting item of news to have appeared in the newspapers this weekend. Rabbi Jacob Neusner wrote it in Corriere della Sera. In an article inside a special feature for the five-year anniversary of Joseph Ratzinger’s pontificate, Neusner writes as follows:

Last January, when I met the Pope in Rome, I asked him what he intended to do when, within about six months, he would have completed the second volume of his Jesus of Nazareth. With a smile, he replied: “Nothing else. This is my last book. I have other matters to expedite.”

A scholar who gives up writing books does not keep the title of scholar for long. Benedict XVI did not have to add: “After all, I am the Pope”. But the academic in me whispered: “At what a price”."

Read Jacob Neusner’s La forza della ragione nel confronto con le altre religioni here.