Good Samaritan is apt role model for Africa

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI has decried the spiritual and material "plundering" of Africa by the wealthy in his first book as pontiff, and he says humanity must rediscover how to be good.

Jesus of Nazareth, which Benedict has described as a purely personal work on the life of Christ meant for Catholic readers, is due in bookstores in Italian, Polish and German on April 16, his 80th birthday.

In an excerpt published this week in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Benedict meditates on the parable of the good Samaritan and the need to love one's neighbor, and says it currently applys in Africa and other places.

"If we apply it to the globalized world, we see how the populations of Africa who have been robbed and plundered concern us," he wrote.

The wealthy, he said, have stripped the poor bare and have wounded them spiritually.