The Church must reach out as shepherds to the whole world, Benedict XVI has said in a letter to his former Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. The Pope Emeritus wrote that “the service of a shepherd cannot be limited only to the Church,” even though “in the first place, we are entrusted with the care of the faithful and of those who are directly seeking faith”. The Church, he said, “is part of the world, and therefore it can properly play its service only if it takes care of the world in its entirety”. Benedict XVI wrote that the “Word of God concerns the totality of reality, and this actuality places on the Church a general responsibility”. A summary of the letter, which Benedict wrote to Cardinal Bertone on April 21, was published in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on May 10. It is published in full, in its original German and in an Italian translation, as the introduction to a new book by Cardinal Bertone, Faith and the Common Good: The Christian Proposal to Contemporary Society. Published by the Vatican Publishing House, the book is a collection of the cardinal’s speeches and remarks on Catholic social teaching. In his letter Benedict emphasised that the cardinal’s book reflects a multi-layered approach to faith, and that this approach “will be food for thought also for readers who are not part of the Church”. Benedict wrote: “Pastoral care does not just deal with the fact that we in the Church provide to the faithful the service of the Sacraments and of the announcement of the Gospel.” Pastoral care, he added, “definitely includes the intellectual dimension”. This means that “only if we share the perspective and questions of our times we will be able to understand the Word of God in present times”. Benedict said the book reminded him of “the years of work together”. He said the mutual collaboration between him and Cardinal Bertone “could not be merely limited to concrete acts of governing”; their partnership went more deeply, “even to the commitment to serve today, in the right way, the Word of God, the Logos”. The letter is only the second original work by Benedict XVI to be made public since his abdication in February 2013. The first, a message to the Pontifical Urban University when they dedicated their main hall to him, was published last October. He has not made a public speech since leaving office.