Vatican Foundation Creates Nobel Prize of Theology

Promotes Study of Ratzinger’s Works

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VATICAN CITY, NOV. 29, 2010 (Zenit.org).- One objective of the new “Vatican Foundation: Joseph Ratzinger — Benedict XVI” is the creation of a Nobel Prize of Theology, announced Cardinal Camillo Ruini.

The cardinal, who is president of the foundation’s scientific committee, stated this Friday at a press conference held at the Vatican.
 
The press conference, which was called to present the foundation, was also attended by Monsignor Giuseppe Scotti, the foundation’s president, and Salvatorian Father Stephan Otto Horn, president of a similar organization that has been operating autonomously in Munich, Germany since 2004.
 
The objective of the Vatican Foundation: Joseph Ratzinger — Benedict XVI is to promote research and study of the thought of Joseph Ratzinger, as well as to organize scientific congresses and award scholars who are outstanding for their theological research.

The foundation offices are located on the Via della Conciliazione, next to the recently created Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization.
 
In addition to Cardinal Ruini, the scientific committee includes Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope’s secretary of state; Cardinal Angelo Amato, the prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes; Archbishop Jean-Louis Brugués, secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education; and Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
 
For Monsignor Scotti, president of the foundation, it is necessary that experts of theology have “the humility to listen to the answers that the Christian faith gives us,” as well as “the humility to perceive in those answers their reasonableness and to make them somehow accessible again to our time and to ourselves.”
 
“In this way,” he said, “not only is the university constituted but humanity is also helped to live.”
 
For his part, Cardinal Ruini said that his aim is “to orient the foundation’s activities to absolute levels of excellence.”
 
This new organization will work in close collaboration with the “Joseph Ratzinger Papst Benedict XVI — Siftung,” created in 2004 in Germany, which organizes cultural and scientific initiatives.
 
Other institutions that are interested in collaborating with this new initiative are the Benedict XVI Institute of Regensburg, which has the objective of producing a full edition of Ratzinger’s writings, and the Heimathaus Foundation of Marktl.

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