East Germany\'s secret police used eight agents to report on Pope Benedict XVI
The former� East Germany's secret police used a total of eight agents over the years to report on Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, the agency that oversees the Stasi's files said Monday.
�
�Christian Booss, a spokesman for the agency, confirmed a report published Sunday by the Bild am Sonntag weekly that the Stasi spied on Ratzinger starting in 1974.
�
�The spokesman added that, of the eight informers who reported on Ratzinger, the identity is known of only two _ a now-deceased Benedictine father and a one-time German religious journalist, the AP reports.
�
�Bild am Sonntag printed excerpts of the files and said Benedict had personally granted it the right to reproduce the material. Vatican officials declined Sunday to comment on the report.
�
�According to the excerpts, the East Germans regarded the Bavarian-born Ratzinger as "one of the strongest critics of communism in the Vatican." They feared he would "increasingly have influence over the anti-communist bias of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly in Latin America."
�
�According to the report, Ratzinger was so closely followed that the Stasi was able to predict his being named prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith _ the post he held before being named pope _ two years before it happened in 1981.