
ROME, JANUARY 10: Remarks from a leading German churchman on Sunday that Pope John Paul II, 79, might consider retiring on health grounds prompted a chorus of condemnation in the Italian media on Monday.
Newspapers referred to the “brutal” and ”premature” statement by German bishops’ conference chairman Karl Lehmann who said on German radio that the Catholic church needed a “strong man who leads.”
The editorials stressed that bishop Lehmann had broken a strict taboo within the church which does not discuss the retirement of a pontiff.






