Vatican Radio to produce radio theater on Pope Benedict XVI

Rome, Italy, Aug 16, 2005 / 22:00 pm

According to a German media publication, Vatican Radio is planning to produce a dramatic radio series, similar to the popular radio theater programs, on the life of Pope Benedict XVI.

According to the magazine Funkkorrespondenz, the Italian-language programs will help familiarize the faithful with the biography of the German Pope.

The producer of the series, Laura De Luca, has recruited 15 radio announcers who will read the parts of the various characters.  The German journalist Bernhard Müller-Hülsebuch will be in the lead role.  Müller-Hülsebuch has lived in Italy for 33 years and is from the same region as Pope Benedict.

According to De Luca, Müller-Hülsebuch “speaks Italian with a clear voice and a slight southern German accent.” 

The first 13 episodes of “Benedict, The Life of Joseph Ratzinger” will cover his life up to 1977, when he still lived in Germany.

Among the characters in the series are the parents of the Pontiff, one of his teachers, and Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne, who made the future Pope his head theologian during the Second Vatican Council.