Pope's book gives insight on priorities

ROME -- In a new book written while he was still a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI suggests what his priorities will be, criticizing what he called attempts to build a community without God in Europe and condemning Western trends to liberalize abortion.

Former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's views are set down in "The Europe of Benedict, in the Crisis of Cultures," which will be presented in a ceremony Tuesday.

The 152-page book, sections of which were made available Monday to The Associated Press, contains material first written in 1992 and updated as recently as early this year, shortly before Benedict's election, according to the Cantagalli publishing house. There are no immediate plans for an English translation.

Ratzinger was a stern critic of the European Union's refusal to make any mention of the continent's Christian roots in a proposed constitution.

On abortion, he asked why societies oppose infanticide "while becoming virtually insensitive to abortion."

"Maybe because in abortion you don't see the face of who will be condemned and never see the light," he wrote.

By allowing parents to exercise their freedoms, he wrote, "you become blind to the right of life of another, the youngest and weakest who doesn't have a voice."

Ratzinger was a prolific writer as a theologian in Germany and continued writing when he took up his post as the Vatican's guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy. He is said to have written many of his papal speeches.

The "Benedict" in the title of the book apparently refers to St. Benedict of Norcia, a patron saint of Europe. His choice of the name is seen as an indication of how he intended to point his pontificate.

St. Benedict, a monk during the 5th and 6th centuries, just after the fall of the Roman Empire, drew up the rules for monastic life. The Benedictine order that followed his teachings became the main guardian of learning and literature in Western Europe during the dark centuries that followed.