Apparently, the Pope won’t be voting…

Tomorrow, September 18th, is election day in Germany and its citizens head to the polls to vote for Chancellor. The race has tightened up significantly, with the two main candidates literally neck-and-neck in the polls. Pollsters, national media, and political think-tanks say that many voters are disillusioned and will not even bother to cast a vote. Other reports cite that as much as 25% of the German population are undecided as to who to vote for. It appears that the winner may simply come down to who shows up at polling places on Sunday. Should be interesting…

And while we are on the topic of Germans casting their vote for Chancellor, it appears that one famous German will be a non-voter in Sunday’s election. Pope Benedict XVI has already stated that while he is technically still a German citizen with an address in Bavaria, he will not be casting a vote on Sunday…either by showing up at polling location to vote or by absentee voting.

Unlike most Germans, Benedict has had the opportunity to get a first-hand impression of both Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his conservative challenger, Angela Merkel, when he met with them during his visit to Cologne for the Catholic World Youth Day in August.

The Pope is “mum” on the subject, but apparently the pope’s bro provides this comment. “He's the sovereign of the Vatican and doesn't think it's appropriate for him to get involved in the affairs of another state”, adding that Pope would definitely follow the election, albeit "not passionately." Maybe the Pope just wants to stay out of it. Seems he has been criticized in the recent past when he has spoken out on a number of other political hot potatos, albeit controversial referendums. But he has stopped short of backing political candidates, including this upcoming German election. Perhaps this pontiff prefers to keep private his personal preferences pertaining to politics…(how about that alliteration?).

Being that the election is on Sunday, I thought that his rationale for not voting might be a bit more simplistic and more along these lines. Something like, "Sundays are bad, because I kind of have to run a major world religion," comes to mind.