VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI offers a personal meditation on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ in his first book as pontiff, criticizing the "cruelty" of capitalism's exploitation of the poor but also decrying the absence of God in Marxism.
In "Jesus of Nazareth," released Friday, Benedict touches on themes that have begun to emerge in his 2-year-old papacy: the spiritual weaknesses of modern materialistic life, in which people seem to think they can do without God.
The book also points to a concern of Benedict from his days as prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, when he sought to stem support for "liberation theology"—the theology of salvation as liberation from injustice, popular in Latin America....