Retired Pope Benedict XVI has said he hopes to soon join a beloved professor friend in “the afterlife,” in a sign that the 94-year-old pontiff is not only accepting his eventual death but welcoming it. Benedict penned an Oct. 2 letter to a German priest, thanking him for letting him know of the passing of the Rev. Gerhard Winkler, a Cistercian priest and academic colleague of the former Joseph Ratzinger. Throughout the papacy of Pope Francis, Benedict has lived in a converted monastery in the Vatican gardens, occasionally greeting visitors and writing, but by and large keeping to his vow to live “hidden to the world.”
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Retired pope hopes to soon join friends in ‘the afterlife’
