Pope Benedict XVI will issue a condensed version of the Roman Catholic Church’s 865-page catechism, or book of official teaching, on June 28, the Vatican said on Wednesday.
The late Pope John Paul II asked the present pontiff, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in 2003 to prepare a compact edition of the catechism published in 1992.
The late pope said the book should ”allow people — believers and not — to embrace in one unified glance the entire panorama of the Catholic faith.”
The compact catechism was expected to weight in at around 70 pages.
Mobile blessings
An Italian man on Wednesday handed over his mobile phone to the pope and asked him to speak to someone on the other end of the line.
The unusual incident took place at the end of the pope’s traditional mid-week meeting with the faithful in St Peter’s Square.
While greeting a group of disabled people, the 78-year-old pontiff was given a mobile phone by a man in a wheelchair. The pope was then seen speaking into its receiver.
Apparently. the man had asked the pope to greet a terminally-ill nun. ‒Sapa-dpa