Retired pope offers final reflections on papacy, Francis

One governance success was the dissolution of the “gay lobby” in the Vatican, Benedict said. At the time, Italian media speculated this was part of the standoff with the prelates who wanted to discredit Benedict.

Benedict became the first pope in 600 years to retire in 2013.

The German and Italian editions were set for release on September 9, but some excerpts were published September 8 by the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera.

“My weak point perhaps is a lack of resolve in governing and making decisions”, he said.

In a book-length interview with the German author Peter Seewald, Pope Benedict said that when he resigned he had the “peace of someone who had overcome difficulty” and “could tranquilly pass the helm to the one who came next”. Practical governance is not my strong point and this is certainly a weakness. “But I can not see myself as a failure”.

In the excerpts, Benedict acknowledges the “difficult moments” of his papacy – the sex-abuse scandal which reignited in 2010, the scandal over his exoneration of a Holocaust-denying bishop, and finally the leaks of his personal papers by his own butler. “In any case, it’s not like there are things like this all over the place”.

Benedict, who lives in the grounds of the Vatican, revealed that the election of Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis had come as a huge surprise to him.

But one area where he claims to have made headway was in trying to clean up the scandal-plagued Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) – better known as the Vatican Bank – and he defends his decision to sack its former President Ettore Gotti Tedeschi.

A more unexpected anecdote emerged on Thursday when Seewald told German magazine Die Zeit that Benedict, found “serious” romance when he was a “good-looking young man”.

George Weigel, a Catholic theologian and papal historian, said Benedict’s decision to publish his interviews is surprising, given that the book would nearly certainly reignite controversy about why Benedict abdicated his role.

“Seewald also recalled telling the ailing Benedict: “‘Your 90th birthday is next year, you will surely still be around for that.’ And he said: “‘Well, hopefully not!'”