100,000-euro birthday bash for pope's brother: report Agence France-Presse

Published: Sunday October 26, 2008





Print This Email This BERLIN (AFP)  A diocese in southern Germany plans to spend 100,000 euros (130,000 dollars) on a birthday bash at the Vatican for the Pope Benedict XVI's elder brother, a magazine report said Sunday.



Georg Ratzinger, who is himself a priest, turns 85 on January 15 and wants Mozart's Mass in C-Minor performed for him in the world-famous Sistine Chapel, German weekly Focus reported.



The diocese of Regensburg in Bavaria is flying in a 90-person choir plus 37 musicians from an orchestra in Linz, Austria for the performance, the magazine said.



The bill is causing some irritation in Regensburg where the diocese's main sources of income are church tax and rent on properties that it owns, the magazine said.



