(LifeSiteNews) — In a new video interview that will be released in parts starting December 8, Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Astana, Kazakhstan, relates how in 2008 he convinced Pope Benedict XVI to stop distributing Holy Communion in the hand.
In the soon-to-be released interview series, which LifeSiteNews has viewed, Schneider begins by recounting how surprised he was when he learned that he was chosen to become a bishop, and how this surprise was only increased when he learned that his being made bishop was a personal decision of Benedict XVI’s.
“You have to know that your nomination was a personal decision of Pope Benedict,” the then-Vatican nuncio told a reportedly speechless Schneider at the time.
These words confirmed to Schneider that his nomination to the episcopate was “the will of God,” adding that he had known then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he had been elected pope.
Schneider relayed that shortly before his episcopal consecration in 2005, during the Synod of Bishops …More