Stasi used eight agents to report on Pope

The former East Germany’s secret police used a total of eight agents over the years to report on Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, the agency that oversees the Stasi’s files said today.

Christian Booss, a spokesman for the agency, confirmed a report published yesterday by the Bild am Sonntag weekly that the Stasi spied on Ratzinger starting in 1974.