Brotherly love is not uncommon, but the more than 80-year-old bond between Monsignor Georg Ratzinger and his brother Joseph, Pope Benedict XVI, is of one of the rarest and most fascinating fraternal relationships ever written about.

In My Brother the Pope, which hit shelves March 1,  Msgr. Ratzinger provided German writer Michael Hesemann with the only living witness to the early days and formation of brothers who were ordained as Catholic priests together on the same day in 1951, after surviving Nazi Germany and World War II.

Msgr. Ratzinger and Pope Benedict XVI, or Georg and Joseph,  in their early days mere sons of an ordinary hard-working policeman and faithful Catholic who married a devout woman he met through taking out a print advertisement, are seen as never before.

“Msgr. Ratzinger draws the picture of a family that grew so strong through the practice of its deep faith that it could withstand all the storms of that time, even those of the godless Nazi regime,” Hesemann writes in the book’s introduction.

Noted author and Papal biographer George Weigel calls My Brother the Pope “an evocative portrait that sheds new light on the experiences that shaped some of the thinking of Pope Benedict XVI.”

Hesemann, whose idea it was to acquire Monsignor Ratzinger’s detailed memoirs about his brother and their unique bond, says of My Brother the Pope, “The Ratzinger family secret is now available to the entire world.”

Msgr. Ratzinger tells Hesemann of the brothers’ early lives, when they were forced to become part of the Hitler Youth and drafted into the army of the Third Reich. My Brother the Pope also provides an intimate look into the Ratzinger family, and the tight knit and devotional Catholic home life that produced not one – but two vocations to priesthood.

“Often on Sundays we attended Mass twice, once as servers and another time with our family, for instance, the early Mass at 6:00 and the main parish Mass at 8:00 or 8:30,” Msgr. Ratzinger told Hesemann.

“Then, in the afternoon at 2 p.m., there were devotions, on feast days a Vespers service. This piety, which was lived and put into practice, defined our whole life, even though today I celebrate only one Mass and refrain from going to a second one. Nevertheless, it was imparted to us as children in the cradle, so to speak, and we remained faithful to it throughout our lives. I am convinced that the lack of this traditional piety in many families is also a reason why there are too few priestly vocations today.”

In My Brother the Pope, Monsignor Ratzinger not only shares – for the first time – a unique depiction of his brother with stories never heard before, but readers will encounter the man, the best friend, who continues to serve as a confidante and guide to the Holy Father to this day in the midst of his Papacy.

“From the beginning of my life,” Pope Benedict said, “my brother has always been for me not only a companion, but a trustworthy guide. For me he has been a point of orientation and of reference with the clarity and determination of his decisions. He has always shown me the path to take, even in difficult situations.”

The Ratzinger brothers celebrated the 60th anniversary of their ordinations to the priesthood last year, and the book includes many pages of black and white and color photos that illustrate the lifelong, lasting friendship the Pope and his brother have enjoyed. They continue to vacation together, and talk to each other daily.

“Not just a fascinating book but a unique one, as well,” said Fr. Benedict Groeschel, of My Brother the Pope. “We are granted an intimate look at the life of one beloved brother through the eyes of another.”

Ooberfuse, an experimental music project based in the United Kingdom has written and will release a song, Blood Cries Out, to honor the memory of those who lose their lives in defense of the marginalized and oppressed.

They are slated to perform the song at a protest march and concert in London on March 10 to commemorate Shahbaz Bhatti and to protest Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws.

Ooberfuse gained international attention for performing the Youth Anthem for Pope Benedict’s visit to the United Kingdom in 2010 and performing at the Madrid World Youth Day in 2011.

Bhatti, a Christian Pakistani politician, was murdered on March 2, 2011 for speaking out against Pakistan’s controversial Blasphemy Laws, which legalize indiscriminate acts of violence against non-Islamic groups such as Sikhs, Hindus and Christians.

Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws impose sentences including execution and life imprisonment for alleged offences against Islam.

Ooberfuse's single "Blood Cries Out" will be released March 2. The band wrote the song in honor of fallen Christian Pakistani politician Shahbaz Bhatti

Though the Pakistan Penal Code prohibits blasphemy against any recognized religion, providing penalties ranging from a fine to death, in practice, the code is only applied to Islam, and calls for change to the blasphemy laws have been strongly resisted by Islamic parties.

Hal, Ooberfuse’s front man said that the group did extensive research when coming up with Blood Cries Out.

“In our research for the song we looked at extremely disturbing footage. Shahbaz’s car, after a visit to his elderly mother’s house, was riddled with bullets and spattered with blood following his assassination.”

“We also watched an interview with Shahbaz weeks before he was killed in which he anticipates further suffering and continuing death threats. The song, Blood Cries Out, samples a phrase from the interview in which Shahbaz says he has experienced already the suffering of the cross. It is a tragic irony that Shahbaz’s message to those who would listen was Christ’s very own ‘Do not kill in the name of religion, but love each other.’”

Cherrie, the band’s front-woman said, that Ooberfuse is excited to be able to take place in the rally and perform Blood Cries Out.

“We were very touched to have been asked to participate in the rally and concert. It proved to be a grave and solemn undertaking to capture musically the sense of outrage which the spilling of innocent blood naturally arouses.

“We had to balance these feelings with a heart-felt cry to those forces in the world that feed on violence. A positive message of peace and reconciliation is contained in the song. We hope it will help to defuse the rage that fuels such atrocities and abominations.”

The rally is being sponsored by the British Pakistani Christian Association and Aid to the Church in Need. The march will kick off at the Pakistani Embassy in Lowndes Square and culminate with the rally and concert in Trafalgar Square.

The song, a powerful, Bhangra-influenced track that showcases Cherrie’s lithe voice will be officially released on March 2, the anniversary of Bhatti’s death. It can be downloaded at http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_12123741.

Catholic leaders on Thursday (Feb. 9) launched an online distance-learning center to help educate church leaders on the prevention of child sex abuse.

Unveiled on the final day of a “Towards Healing and Renewal” conference sponsored by the Vatican, the new online forum will provide training and certificate programs in four languages.

The center will cost 1.2 million euros ($1.92 million) for the first three years, partly funded by the U.S.-based Papal Foundation charity. The Rev. Hans Zollner, one of the conference organizers, stressed that all the foundation’s expenditures are expressly approved by Pope Benedict XVI.

The conference also highlighted the global scope of the child abuse crisis. Bishops from Asia, South America and Asia admitted that sexual abuse is not just a “Western problem,” even if the numbers of reported cases outside Europe and North America remain small.

The Rev. Edenio Valle of Brazil said bishops there had “no idea of what could or should be done.” Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila, Philippines, said Asia’s “culture of shame” may be responsible for victims’ silence.

Even in the U.S., “many victims of sexual assault never report” the violence, warned Michael Bemi and Patricia Neal, who helped craft the “Protecting God’s Children” program that’s used in 115 U.S. dioceses.

Though a church-sponsored independent study identified at least 15,000 abuse victims from 1950-2009, others estimate the total number could be as high as 100,000 as some victims remain silent.

The Vatican’s doctrinal chief on Monday (Feb. 6) told Catholic bishops from all over the world that they have a duty to “cooperate” with civil law on cases of clergy sexual abuse of minors.

Cardinal William J. Levada, a former archbishop of San Francisco who now heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with jurisdiction over abuse cases, stopped short, however, of requiring bishops to report abuse cases to prosecutors or police.

Speaking to a Vatican-sponsored conference on the church’s response to the scandal at Rome’s Gregorian University, Levada admitted that the church’s relations with civil authorities “may be different from one nation to another,” but stressed that this must not affect the basic principle of cooperation.

He also urged bishops to be “more proactive” in their response to the crisis, rather than wait for the scandal to erupt in the media.

Last May, the Vatican gave all bishops conferences around the world one year to draft voluntary “guidelines” on preventing abuse, caring for victims, disciplining abusive priests, and reporting suspected abuse to local police.

An estimated 4,000 cases of sexual abuse by clergy have been reported to Levada’s Vatican department during the last 10 years, he said.

Levada also highlighted the importance of listening to victims’ grievances, accompanying them “on the often long path of healing,” and encouraging them to follow the example of Pope Benedict XVI in meeting with victims.

In a message sent to the conference participants, Benedict wrote that victims healing must be of “paramount concern” for the church. The Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests dismissed the conference as “window dressing” that will not result in real reform.

Vatican officials are strongly refuting allegations made by the pope’s new ambassador to the United States that the Vatican City State is awash in corruption and waste.

A statement issued on Saturday (Feb. 4) by the current and past leaders of the Vatican’s Governorate, which oversees the management of Vatican City, has dismissed claims made by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano as “erroneous,” “unfounded” and “based on groundless fears.”

Vigano, who had been secretary general of the Governorate from 2009 until his appointment as papal nuncio to Washington last October, expressed his worries directly to Pope Benedict XVI in two letters unearthed by an Italian TV program in January.

Vigano told the pope that Vatican City’s management was “disastrous,” and asked Benedict to not transfer him to Washington. The move, he said, would cause “disarray and discouragement” among those who worked against “numerous situations of corruption and waste.”

The Vatican’s top spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, had initially threatened to sue the TV program that revealed the letters and dismissed its coverage as “biased.” Lombardi also reaffirmed the pope’s “unquestionable respect and trust” towards Vigano.

Saturday’s statement strikes a different chord, however, saying that Vigano’s assertions portray the Vatican’s Governorate as an “untrustworthy entity, controlled by dark forces.”

The statement was signed by Vigano’s former superior, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, and by Giovanni’s deputy, Bishop Giorgio Corbellini, and by the Governorate’s current president and secretary general.

Pope Benedict XVI praised new communications technologies like Twitter on Tuesday (Jan. 24), saying that even “concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible,” can convey “profound thoughts.”

Benedict did not explicitly refer to Twitter in his yearly message for World Communications Day, but Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, told reporters that “it’s safe to say that a reference to ‘tweets’ is there.”

Benedict wrote that in today’s world, “various types of websites, applications and social networks” can help people “find time for reflection and authentic questioning.”

A number of high-ranking churchmen already use Twitter. Cardinals Sean O’Malley of Boston; Odilo Scherer of Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, have thousands of followers. According to Celli, most of the visitors to the Vatican’s online news portal, www.news.va, arrive from social networks.

In his message, the pope also focused on the value of silence in communication, saying that without it, meaningful messages “cannot exist.”

“When messages and information are plentiful,” he wrote, silence becomes essential if we are to distinguish what is important from what is insignificant or secondary.”

VATICAN CITY — After a 15-year process, the Holy See on Friday (Jan. 20) gave its final approval to the Neocatechumenal Way, a lay movement that has been criticized for its unorthodox liturgical practices but that has been successful in attracting followers.

The movement relies on tightly knit small groups, modeled on early Christian communities, that share a decade-long spiritual growth path under the guidance of a priest.

Pope Benedict XVI told around 7,000 members of the movement that Neocatechumenal communities could continue in their tradition of celebrating a special Saturday evening Mass, as long as the local bishop approved and the celebrations remained open to the public.

Nevertheless, he encouraged the movement’s members not to remain “separate” from their parish community.

The pope praised the Neocatechumenal Way as a “special gift” of the Holy Spirit for modern times, especially as secularism “has eclipsed the sense of God and obscured Christian values.” The movement, he said, can help Christians rediscover the “beauty” of their faith.

The Way’s founder, Kiko Arguello, said Friday’s approval was a “historic moment” after the “many troubles” the movement had faced in the process of receiving the Vatican’s approval.

The movement’s focus on preaching in secular contexts resonates with Benedict’s recent focus on “re-evangelizing” Western countries where the faith has grown weak.

At the end of the audience, Benedict sent out 17 new teams of Neocatechumenal missionaries, who will work mostly in Europe and in the U.S. Each team is made up of three or four families accompanied by a priest.

PARIS — A decade ago, Rene Lebouvier requested that his local Catholic church erase his name from the baptismal register. The church noted his demands on the margins of its records and the chapter was closed.

But the clergy abuse scandals rocking Europe, coupled with Pope Benedict XVI’s conservative stances on contraception, hardened Lebouvier’s views. Last October, a court in Normandy ruled in favor of his lawsuit to have his name permanently deleted from church records — making the 71-year-old retiree the first Frenchman to be officially “de-baptized.”

“I took the judicial route to get myself de-baptized because of the church’s excesses,” said Lebouvier, speaking by telephone from his village of Fleury, near the D-Day beaches.

“It’s a sort of honesty toward the church because they have a guy on their register who doesn’t believe in God.”

Lebouvier’s case is among a growing wave of de-baptisms in Europe, one of the most visible manifestations of the continent’s secular drift. Websites offering informal de-baptism certificates have mushroomed. Other Christians are formally breaking from the church by opting out of state church taxes.

“The movement is happening across Europe,” said Anne Morelli, who heads a center studying religion and secularity at the Free University of Brussels. “It was very apparent during 2011 — in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Austria. It is obviously related to the scandals of pedophile priests, but it has been going on for some time.”

While there are no official statistics, experts and secular activists count the numbers of de-baptisms in the tens of thousands. It’s a phenomenon that has touched Protestant as well as Catholic communities.

In France, the de-baptism drive affects a relatively tiny proportion of Christians, experts say. Still, Lebouvier’s case may create a precedent.

The local bishop of Coutances, Stanislas Lalanne, has appealed the court ruling, a process that could take years.

“Baptism is a spiritual gift, it’s bigger than we are,” said Bernard Podvin, spokesman for the French Bishops Confederation, who would not comment on the specifics of the Normandy case. “It can’t be confined to a purely administrative framework.”

But if Lebouvier wins, de-baptism could become standard practice here, and trigger copycat lawsuits across Europe.

“The church is afraid the movement might amplify,” said Marc Blondel, president of the Paris-based National Federation of Freethinkers, who says he will launch another de-baptism drive if Lebouvier prevails.

Lebouvier’s split from the church took decades. Born in a deeply conservative and religious community, he went to Catholic school. But instead of becoming the priest his mother had wished, he became a baker, moving to Paris and joining a leftist trade union.

“I changed 180 degrees, “ he said. “It took time, but it happened.”

Change is afoot elsewhere. In neighboring Belgium, which has been hit hard by the church sex scandals, de-baptism requests in the French-speaking region alone soared to roughly 2,000 in 2010, compared to 66 two years earlier, according to the Brussels Federation of Friends of Secular Morality. The numbers of people reportedly leaving the Dutch church reportedly shot up 25 percent.

In Britain, a de-baptism certificate offered as a joke by the National Secular Society has since turned serious after tens of thousands of people downloaded it.

“Some people actually do feel actively hostile toward churches,” said society president Terry Sanderson. “And they want to express that by saying, ‘I’m not one of your members.’”

In Germany, a record 181,000 Catholics formally split from the Catholic Church in 2011 — the first time that Catholic defections outpaced Protestants leaving. Rather than requesting de-baptisms, Germans fill out government paperwork saying they no longer want to pay church taxes.

“I don’t think they want to get rid of their belief, their connection to Jesus and the baptism, but they don’t want to be connected with the church hierarchy,” said Christian Weisner, German spokesman for the international lay reform movement We are Church.

At stake for many cash-strapped European churches is not just faith, but euros.

“It’s not by chance that in Germany, Austria and Belgium that the movement is strongest,” says Belgian researcher Morelli, noting countries that levy church taxes, which France does not. “It’s also a struggle about subsidies the population must pay for a church that doesn’t represent them.”

The bigger worry, experts say, are plummeting rates of new baptisms. Half a century ago, for example, 90 percent of French children were baptized, said Sorbonne University religion professor Philippe Portier. Today, roughly one in three are.

“The church considers de-baptisms a very marginal phenomena and its strategy right now is to resist it,” Portier said. “It is much more active when it comes to reversing the drop in (new) baptisms — there it’s put in place a new evangelizing strategy.”

The parish at Paris’ historic Saint-Germain-des-Pres, for example, is offering a myriad of activities, from ski retreats to support networks for young professionals. At a recent evening youth Mass, the church was overflowing.

The parish priest, the Rev. Benoist de Sinety, is counting on faith, not numbers.

“What is striking today is that those who want to be Christian really want to be Christian,” he said. “I rejoice in the fact that people are free to choose.”

A Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop from Los Angeles has resigned after admitting he is the father of two children, both now teenagers.

Europe’s economic and financial crisis is the consequence of an “ethical crisis” and a “crisis of faith,” Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday (Dec. 22), resulting in the triumph of selfishness over social responsibility.

Benedict made his remarks in his annual Christmas speech to the Roman Curia, the Catholic Church’s central administration at the Vatican.

The pope acknowledged that “such values as solidarity, commitment to one’s neighbor and responsibility toward the poor and suffering are largely uncontroversial,” but said the “motivation is often lacking … to make sacrifices.”

While the remedy for selfishness lies in “proclamation of the gospel,” the pope said Europe is now undergoing a crisis of faith evident in the troubles of the Roman Catholic Church.

“Regular churchgoers are growing older all the time and … their number is constantly diminishing,” and “recruitment of priests is stagnating” while “skepticism and unbelief are growing.”

Benedict drew a contrast between Europe’s anemic religious life and Africa’s “joyful passion for faith,” which he experienced last month during a three-day visit to the West African country of Benin.

“None of the faith fatigue that is so prevalent (in Europe), none of the oft-encountered sense of having had enough of Christianity, was detectable there,” the pope said.

Benedict noted the benefits of religious faith to African society, which he said provides the “strength to serve Christ in hard-pressed situations of human suffering, the strength to put oneself at his disposal, without looking round for one’s own advantage.”