In 2006, one year after Pope Benedict’s election, Swiss born theologian, Father Hans Küng (+2021), travelled from Germany to Switzerland to meet the Provincial of the Swiss Jesuits, Father Christian Rutishauser.
Küng wanted to initiate a collaboration between his Stiftung Weltethos (Global Ethic Foundation) and the Jesuit Lassalle Retreat House in Bad Schönbrunn, Switzerland.
Rutishauser told the Zurich Parish Bulletin Forum that, on this occasion, he asked Küng how he had felt when he heard that Joseph Ratzinger had been elected pope.
Küng was silent for a moment, then burst out in Swiss German dialect: “Dä Sausiech hät's gschafft” (The scumbag/bastard has made it).
Only a few months earlier, a naïve Benedict XVI had received Küng for a four-hour private audience in Castel Gandolfo.
According to the official webpage Küng’s Global Ethic project is about creating the basis “for peaceful and respectful coexistence across the boundaries of religions, cultures and nations.”
Picture: Hans …More