Benedict XVI turns 95 as book focuses on anomaly of 2 popes

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI turned 95 this past weekend. And to mark the occasion, a new book sets out to examine the current state of the Catholic Church not so much through the lens of Pope Francis’ nine-year papacy, but via Benedict’s nine-year retirement. And it isn’t pretty. Veteran Italian commentator Massimo Franco’s “The Monastery,” published in Italy on Thursday, shifts the focus of most papal books by using Benedict’s retirement home in a converted monastery in the Vatican gardens as the symbolic prism to view the absolute anomaly of having two popes living together in the Vatican.