"Every prisoner, for any reasons he might end up in prison, guesses how heavy this particular human condition may be, above all, when it is brutalized by resort to torture, as happened with Boethius". Those words were spoken by the Pope during today’s general audience, dedicated to the figures of Boethius and Cassiodorus. The Pope defined "the condition of those who are tortured to death for no other reasons than their ideal, political and religious convictions particularly absurd". In this sense, Boethius, according to Benedict XVI, is "the symbol of an immense number of prisoners unfairly condemned, in all times and at all latitudes". He was born in Rome in 480 and sentenced to death unfairly – with the "pretext" of "conspiracy" against King Theodoric – on 23 October 524, when he was just 44 years old. Boethius, "owing exactly to his dramatic end said the Pope can speak from inside the contemporary man, and above all, he can speak to the large number of people who are subject to the same fate, because of present-day injustice affecting vast fields of human justice" (to be continued).” ” ” “
