Retired pope hopes to soon join friends in 'the afterlife'

ROME — Retired Pope Benedict XVI has said helium hopes to soon articulation a beloved prof person successful “the afterlife,” successful a motion that the 94-year-old pontiff is not lone accepting his eventual decease but welcoming it.

Benedict penned an Oct. 2 missive to a German priest, thanking him for letting him cognize of the passing of the Rev. Gerhard Winkler, a Cistercian clergyman and world workfellow of the erstwhile Josef Ratzinger.

“Of each my colleagues and friends helium was the closest to me,” Benedict wrote, according to the missive reproduced successful German media. “Now helium has reached the afterlife, wherever galore friends surely await him. I anticipation I tin articulation them soon.”

Benedict became the archetypal pope successful 600 years to resign erstwhile helium renounced the papacy successful 2013, saying helium didn’t person the spot of assemblage and caput to usher the Catholic Church.

Throughout the papacy of Pope Francis, Benedict has lived successful a converted monastery successful the Vatican gardens, occasionally greeting visitors and writing, but by and ample keeping to his vow to unrecorded “hidden to the world.”