Joseph Ratzinger as a young priest celebrating mass in the mountains of
Ruhpolding, Southern Germany, in 1952
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI (Latin: Benedictus PP. XVI), born Joseph Alois Ratzinger on April 16, 1927 in Marktl am Inn, Bavaria, Germany, was elected the 265th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church on April 19, 2005. By virtue of his office, he is the Sovereign of the Vatican City State. He will be formally installed as the new pontiff during the Mass of Papal Installation on April 24, 2005, although he officially became pope and Bishop of Rome the moment he accepted his election in the conclave.
Ratzinger was elected at the age of 78, the oldest man since Clement XII (elected 1730) at the start of his papacy, and is the eighth German pontiff, the first since Adrian VI (1522–1523).[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#endnote_AdrianVI) The first German pope was Gregory V (996–999). The last Benedict, Benedict XV, was an Italian who served as pontiff from 1914 to 1922 and reigned during World War I.
Ratzinger had a distinguished career as a university theologian before he became Archbishop of Munich, and he was subsequently made a Cardinal by Pope Paul VI in the consistory of June 27, 1977. He was appointed prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by Pope John Paul II in 1981 and was made a Cardinal Bishop of Title of episcopal see of the Suburbicarian Church of Velletri-Segni on April 5, 1993. In 1998, he was made Vice-Dean of the College of Cardinals; later, on November 30, 2002, he became Dean. This last position also resulted in his becoming Cardinal Bishop of the Suburbicarian Church of Ostia.
He was already one of the most influential men in the Vatican and a close associate of the late John Paul II before he became pope. He also presided over the funeral of John Paul II and the 2005 conclave that elected him. He was the public face of the church in much of the sede vacante, although he ranked below the Cardinal Camerlengo in both rank and authority during that time.
Ratzinger speaks several languages, including German, Spanish, Italian, English, and Latin. He is also fluent in French and has been an associate member of the French Académie des sciences morales et politiques since 1992.
Ratzinger's views appear to be very similar to those of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. He has opposed changing the traditional Catholic doctrines on marriage, family, and human relations. His stance, in accordance with Catholic doctrine, should not be confused with those of conservatives in a political sense, because of his (also Catholic) opposition to the death penalty and preemptive war and his emphasis on social justice and opposition to the excesses of capitalism and consumerism.
Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, at 11 Schulstrasse, his parents' home in Marktl am Inn, Bavaria. He was the third and youngest child of Joseph Ratzinger, Sr., a police officer, and his wife, Maria Ratzinger (née Riger), who was employed as a cook. His father served in both the Bavarian State Police (Landespolizei) and the national Regular Police (Ordnungspolizei) before retiring in 1937 to the town of Traunstein. The Sunday Times of London described the elder Ratzinger as "an anti-Nazi whose attempts to rein in Hitler’s Brown Shirts forced the family to move several times." [2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#endnote_timesonline). According to the International Herald Tribune, these relocations were directly related to Joseph Ratzinger, Sr.'s continued resistance to Nazism, which resulted in demotions and transfers. [3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#endnote_www.iht.com) "Our father was a bitter enemy of Nazism because he believed it was in conflict with our faith," the pope's brother, Georg Ratzinger, told the New York Times [4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#endnote_www.nytimes.com).
His brother, Georg, who also became a priest as well as a musician and medievalist, is still living. His sister, Maria Ratzinger, who never married, managed her brother Joseph's household until her death in 1991. Their grand uncle Georg Ratzinger was a priest and member of the Reichstag, the German Parliament.
According to his cousin Erika Kopp, Ratzinger had no desire from childhood to be anything other than a priest. When he was 15, she says, he announced that he was going to be a bishop, whereupon she playfully remarked, 'And why not Pope?' [5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#endnote_theage). An even earlier incident occurred in 1932, when Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber, the archbishop of Munich, visited the small town in which the Ratzinger family lived, arriving in a black limousine. The future pope, then five years old, was part of a group of children who presented the cardinal with flowers, and later that day he announced he wanted to be a cardinal, too. "It wasn't so much the car, since we weren't technically minded," Georg Ratzinger told a reporter from the New York Times. "It was the way the cardinal looked, his bearing, and the garments he was wearing that made such an impression on him." [6] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#endnote_www.iht.com)
When Ratzinger turned 14 in 1941, he was enrolled in the Hitler Youth, membership of which was legally required from 1938 until the end of the "Third Reich" in 1945. According to National Catholic Reporter correspondent and biographer John Allen, Ratzinger was an unenthusiastic member who refused to attend meetings. Ratzinger has mentioned that a National Socialist mathematics professor arranged reduced tuition payments for him at seminary. While this normally required documentation of attendance at Hitler Youth activities, according to Ratzinger, his professor arranged that the young seminary student did not need to attend those gatherings to receive a scholarship.
In 1943, when he was 16, Ratzinger was drafted with many of his classmates into the FlaK (anti-aircraft artillery corps). They were posted first to Ludwigsfeld, north of Munich, as part of a detachment responsible for guarding a BMW aircraft engine plant from Allied bombers. Next they were sent to Unterföhring, northwest of Munich, and briefly to Innsbruck. From Innsbruck their unit went to Gilching to protect the jet fighter base and to attack Allied bombers as they massed to begin their runs towards Munich. At Gilching, Ratzinger served in telephone communications.
On September 10, 1944, his class was released from the Corps. Returning home, Ratzinger had already received a new draft notice for the Reichsarbeitsdienst. He was posted to the Hungarian border area of Austria which had been annexed by Germany in the Anschluss of 1938. Here he was trained in the "cult of the spade" and upon the surrender of Hungary to Russia was put to work setting up anti-tank defences in preparation for the expected Red Army offensive. On November 20, 1944, his unit was released from service.
Ratzinger again returned home. After three weeks passed, he was drafted into the army at Munich and assigned to the infantry barracks in the center of Traunstein, the city near which his family lived. After basic infantry training, his unit was sent to various posts around the city. They were never sent to the front.
In late April or early May, days or weeks before the German surrender, Ratzinger deserted. Desertion was widespread during the last weeks of the war, even though punishable by death; executions, frequently extrajudicial, continued to the end. In the days preceding imminent German defeat, however, many soldiers deserted. Diminished morale and the greatly diminished risk of prosecution from a preoccupied and disorganized German military, also contributed to widespread desertion. Ratzinger left the city of Traunstein and returned to his nearby village. "I used a little-known back road hoping to get through unmolested. But, as I walked out of a railroad underpass, two soldiers were standing at their posts, and for a moment the situation was extremely critical for me. Thank God that they, too, had had their fill of war and did not want to become murderers." They used the excuse of his arm being in a sling to let him go home.
Soon after, two SS members were given shelter at the Ratzinger family's house, and they began to make enquiries about the presence there of a young man of military age. Ratzinger's father made clear to them his ire against Hitler, and the two disappeared the next day without taking any action. Cardinal Ratzinger later stated, "A special angel seemed to be guarding us." When the Americans arrived in the village, "I was identified as a soldier, had to put back on the uniform I had already abandoned, had to raise my hands and join the steadily growing throng of war prisoners whom they were lining up on our meadow. It especially cut my good mother's heart to see her boy and the rest of the defeated army standing there, exposed to an uncertain fate..."
Ratzinger was briefly interned in a prisoner of war camp near Ulm and was released on June 19, 1945. He and another young man began to walk the 120 km (75 miles) home but got a lift to Traunstein in a milk truck. The family was reunited when his brother, Georg, returned after being released from a prisoner of war camp in Italy.
After he was repatriated, he and his brother entered a Catholic seminary. On June 29, 1951, they were ordained by Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich. His dissertation (1953) was on Saint Augustine entitled "The People and the House of God in Augustine's Doctrine of the Church", and his Habilitationsschrift (a dissertation which serves as qualification for a professorship) was on Saint Bonaventure. It was completed in 1957 and he became a professor of Freising college in 1958.
Ratzinger was a professor at the University of Bonn from 1959 until 1963, when he moved to the University of Münster. In 1966, he took a chair in dogmatic theology at the University of Tübingen, where he was a colleague of Hans Küng but was confirmed in his orthodox views by the liberal atmosphere of Tübingen and the Marxist leanings of the student movement of the 1960s. In 1969 he returned to Bavaria, to the University of Regensburg.
At the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), Ratzinger served as a peritus or theological consultant to Josef Cardinal Frings of Cologne, Germany, and has continued to defend the council, including Nostra Aetate, the document on respect of other religions and the declaration of the right to religious freedom. He was viewed during the time of the council as a reformer. As the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger most clearly spelled out the Catholic Church's position on other religions in the document Dominus Iesus which also talks about the proper way to engage in ecumenical dialogue.
In 1972, he founded the theological journal Communio [7] with Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac , Walter Kasper and others. Communio, now published in seventeen editions (German, English, Spanish and many others), has become one of the most important journals of Catholic thought. He remains one of the journal's most prolific contributors.
In March 1977 Ratzinger was named archbishop of Munich and Freising. According to his autobiography, Milestones, he took as his episcopal motto Cooperatores Veritatis, co-workers of the Truth, from 3 John 8.
In the consistory of June 1977 he was named a cardinal by Pope Paul VI. At the time of the 2005 Conclave, he was one of only 14 remaining cardinals appointed by Paul VI, and one of only three of those under the age of 80 and thus eligible to participate in that conclave.
On November 25, 1981 Pope John Paul II named Ratzinger prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which was renamed in 1908 by Pope Pius X. He resigned the Munich archdiocese in early 1982. Already a cardinal priest, he was raised to the dignity of cardinal bishop of Velletri-Segni in 1993. He became vice-dean of the College of Cardinals in 1998, and dean in 2002. In office, Ratzinger usually took traditional views on topics such as birth control, homosexuality, and inter-religious dialogue.
On January 2, 2005, TIME magazine quoted unnamed Vatican sources as saying that Ratzinger was a frontrunner to succeed John Paul II should the pope die or become too ill to continue as Pontiff. On the death of John Paul II, the Financial Times gave the odds of Ratzinger becoming pope as 7–1, the lead position, but close to his rivals on the liberal wing of the church.
Piers Paul Read wrote in The Spectator on March 5, 2005:
Cardinal Ratzinger had repeatedly stated he would like to retire to a Bavarian village and dedicate himself to writing books, but more recently, he told friends he was ready to "accept any charge God placed on him." After the death of John Paul II on April 2, 2005 Ratzinger ceased functioning as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As he is now pope, it will be up to him to decide who will follow him in the role of prefect.
In April 2005, he was identified as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine.
On April 19, 2005 Cardinal Ratzinger was elected as the successor to Pope John Paul II on the second day of the papal conclave after four ballots. Coincidentally, April 19 is the feast of St. Leo IX, a German pope and saint.
Before his first appearance at the balcony of Saint Peter's Basilica after becoming pope, he was announced by the Cardinal Medina Estévez, protodeacon of the College of Cardinals. Cardinal Estévez first addressed the massive crowd as "dear(est) brothers and sisters" in Italian, Spanish, French, German and English — each language receiving cheers from the international crowd — before continuing in Latin. He announced the decision with the words:
Which translates to:
At the balcony, Ratzinger's first words to the crowd, before he gave the traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing, were, in Italian:
He then gave the blessing to the people.
The choice of the name Benedict (Latin "the blessed") is significant. The new pope's birthday is on 16 April and that day is the feast of Saint Benedict Joseph Labre (26 March 1748 – 16 April 1783), also known as the Holy Pilgrim. In addition, the previous Pope Benedict XV (1914 to 1922) was seen as a conciliator who calmed the disputes between modernist and anti-modernist factions with the Church, and the adoption of the name Benedict has been seen as a sign that Ratzinger has similar goals. Additionally, Der Spiegel reports on an interview with Cardinal Meisner, usually regarded as close to Ratzinger, stating that he chose Benedict because of Benedict XV who "did much for peace in the world".[8] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#endnote_spiegel) Ratzinger has not yet made specific public comments on why he chose the name, or if he had considered the issue of choosing a name prior to entering the conclave.
Theology professor Susan Roll of the University of Ottawa speculates in the Globe and Mail, however, that the new Pope's name may be taken from St. Benedict, who founded the Benedictine Order and is credited by Catholics for preserving Christian civilization during the Great Migration in the Early Middle Ages. St. Benedict is also one of the patron saints of Europe. Ratzinger has always been concerned that Europe should do its utmost not to lose its Christian heritage. Some have speculated that the choice of the name of Europe's patron signals an intention to reclaim Europe for Christ.
However, John Allen, the new pope's biographer and a longtime Vatican observer, told CNN on April 20, 2005, that the choice of name also appears to be a purposeful allusion to the fact that the previous holder of the name Benedict was shortlived in office. Ratzinger's brother has stated that he hoped that his aged sibling would not be elected to the papacy due to the pressures of the office and the fact that in 1991, Cardinal Ratzinger suffered a brain hemorrhage. "At age 78 it's not good to take on such a job which challenges the entire person and the physical and mental existence," Georg Ratzinger, then 81 years of age, said in an article published in the Guardian on April 20, 2005. "At an age when you approach 80 it's no longer guaranteed that one is able to work and get up the next day." Given this history, John Allen noted that the pope likely has "a very keen sense that this may not be a very long pontificate and there's an awful lot to do."
Allen's observation is further corroborated by Ratzinger's comments to cardinals just after his election, explaining his name. Chicago's Cardinal Francis George said that Ratzinger told the cardinals, "I too hope in this short reign to be a man of peace."
Some view the pope's choice of name as a fulfillment of the Prophecy of the Popes of St. Malachy.
Ratzinger has taken positions similar to his predecessor, John Paul II, and has been a staunch defender of existing Catholic doctrine. He has made it clear that he intends to maintain traditions, and not give in to modern pressures to change fundamental Church dogma and teaching on such issues as birth control, abortion, and same-sex marriage. Ratzinger maintains the Church's opposition to moral relativism, which he sees as producing views ranging "from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth." [9] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#endnote_hughhewitt)
Ratzinger's theology places much emphasis on the role of the institutions of the Catholic Church as the instrument by which God's message manifests itself on Earth. As such, he does not view the search for moral truth as a dialectic and incremental process, and this view of the role of the Church is one that tends to resist external social trends rather than submitting to them. Additionally, he played an important role in centralizing the church under John Paul II and is expected to accelerate the process as Pope.[10] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#endnote_tnr)
In a pre-conclave mass in St. Peter's Basilica, he warned, "We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires."
Ratzinger has strongly opposed liberation theology but at the same time been a strong supporter of charismatic Catholicism, and some of his theological work has been devoted to stating the difference between the two. Furthermore, he has spoken positively about the Vatican II council and has shown no evidence that he intends to reverse or limit the decisions of that council.
Ratzinger is a theologian in a modern orthodox vein. His theology aims at a synthesis of Thomism, philosophical personalism (with such proponents as Martin Buber, John Paul II — in his case, however, tempered by phenomenology, and, more recently, Leon Kass) and the 'nouvelle théologie' of Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar. This is a sharp contrast with the school of thought represented by Karl Rahner, Hans Küng, and Edward Schillebeeckx.
At one of the first masses of his pontificate he urged Catholics to show a greater devotion to the "Eucharistic Jesus."
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