(Pope April 19, 2005 to February 28, 2013)
Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born April 16, 1927 at Marktl am In, Germany. His father was a policeman and his mother a hotel cook. The youngest of three children, Ratzinger was six years old when the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933. In 1941, peer pressure compelled him to join the Hitler Youth, and in 1943 he was drafted into the German military. He served in an antiaircraft unit in Bavaria before being sent to Hungary to set tank traps in 1945. He deserted in April of that year and was captured by American forces and held prisoner for a brief period.
After the war, Ratzinger continued his education in the seminary and was ordained priest in June 1951. In 1953 he was awarded a doctorate in theology at the University of Munich. After earning his teaching license in 1957, he taught dogma and theology at the higher school of philosophy and theology in Freising until 1959, later moving to the University of Bonn (1959–69), teaching at universities in Münster (1963–66) and at the invitation of the theologian Hans Küng, at Tübingen (1966–69). In 1969 he moved to the University of Regensburg, where he later became vice president.
During his long academic career, Ratzinger wrote several important theological works, including Introduction to Christianity (1968) and Dogma and Revelation (1973). His work in theology attracted the attention of the Archbishop of Cologne, Joseph Frings, who asked Ratzinger to serve as his expert assistant at the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). One of the more progressive figures at the council, Ratzinger opposed those who hoped to limit reform. He contributed to a document that severely criticized the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and that eventually led to its reorganization by Pope Paul VI as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Ratzinger’s university years, however, brought about a transformation of his views. The student protests and denunciations of Christianity that he witnessed while teaching at Tübingen reminded him of the tactics of the Nazis and gradually led him to adopt a more conservative theological perspective.
In March 1977, Ratzinger was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising by Pope Paul VI and was made Cardinal three months later. On November 25, 1981, he was made prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by his friend, Pope John Paul II, whom he had known well since 1977. The pope and his prefect shared a similar history, both having lived under totalitarian regimes, and their views concerning the church were substantially the same. For more than two decades, Ratzinger was the Pope’s closest adviser.
As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office responsible for preserving Catholic doctrine and evaluating warrants under canon law for disciplinary action against clergy, Ratzinger earned a reputation as a hard-liner. He condemned liberation theology and suppressed more-liberal theologians such as the Brazilian Leonardo Boff and the American Charles Curran. Despite his reputation, even his harshest critics recognized his intelligence and his ability to discuss controversial matters in an objective and disinterested spirit. He was also recognized for his humility and gentleness as well as for his many talents. He spoke several languages and was an accomplished pianist. Although Ratzinger insisted on the superiority of the Catholic faith to other religions, which he deemed insufficient as means to salvation, he was also closely involved in Pope John Paul II’s historic efforts to reach out to other faiths, especially Judaism and Islam.
Ratzinger humbly accepted his election as Pope on April 19, 2005, upon the death of Pope John Paul II on April 2, 2005. At age 78, he was the oldest newly elected pope since Clement XII (pope 1730–40). His choice of the name Benedict XVI recalled St. Benedict of Nursia, the patron saint of Europe and the founder of Western monasticism, as well as earlier popes of the same name, including Pope Benedict XV (pope 1914–22), who sought to mediate between the belligerents during World War I.
Benedict XVI immediately took steps to continue John Paul II’s dialogue with Judaism and Islam and with other Christian churches. Further, he declared that one of the goals of his papacy would be to revitalize the Catholic church in Europe. Benedict also indicated that he would maintain his predecessor’s conservative orthodoxy on matters of sexuality, priestly celibacy, and ecclesiastical organization.
During the early years of his papacy, Benedict visited several countries, including Turkey, where he met the ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, in the hope of improving relations between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. He issued new guidelines allowing greater use of the Latin mass—the order of the Mass used before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council—and he published the encyclicals Deus caritas est (2005; “God Is Love”) and Spe salvi (2007; “Saved by Hope”). In 2007 Benedict approved the decisions of the International Theological Commission, an advisory panel to the Vatican, that the traditional teaching of limbo was “unduly restrictive” and that unbaptized infants could be saved. He made his first trip to the Western Hemisphere, visiting Brazil, where he canonized Father Antonio Galvão (1739–1822), the first native-born Brazilian saint. He also overturned John Paul II’s reform of the papal election process and restored the traditional practice when he declared that the election of a new pope requires a two-thirds majority of the cardinals attending the conclave.
In 2008 Benedict made his first visit as pope to the United States, where he spoke out against clerical sexual abuse and delivered an address at the United Nations. Later that year he addressed the first Catholic-Muslim Forum, a three-day conference of Catholic theologians and Islamic scholars hosted by the Vatican to promote improved understanding between the two religions.
Benedict made a controversial decision in January 2009 to revoke the excommunications of four bishops who, in 1988, had been consecrated, without papal sanction, by Marcel Lefebvre, an ultraconservative French archbishop who was excommunicated with them. In November of that same year, in an act of outreach to conservative Anglicans, Benedict approved an apostolic constitution, or special decree, that allowed Anglican clergymen and laypersons to join the Roman Catholic Church while maintaining some Anglican traditions.
In 2010, allegations of sexual and physical abuse by parish priests and in parochial schools—particularly in Germany, Ireland, and the United States—brought Benedict, and his role in the cases in Germany in particular, under close media scrutiny. In a pastoral letter, Benedict rebuked the bishops of the Irish church for a failure of leadership. The Vatican also denounced as “false and calumnious” the charge that, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict had been responsible for a policy of covering up cases of sexual abuse, declaring that his handling of the cases showed “wisdom and firmness.”
In February 2013 Benedict announced that he would resign as Pope at the end of that month, citing age and health concerns. He became the first pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415. His final public address in St. Peter’s Square drew a crowd of more than 50,000. On February 28, 2013, he formally resigned, taking the title Pope Emeritus. Pope Emeritus was rarely seen after that but did make a visit to Bavaria to visit his sick brother, who later died in July 2020. On December 31, 2022, Pope Benedict XVI died at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in Vatican City at the age of 95. His funeral was held on January 5, 2023, in St. Peter’s Square. Approximately 50,000 people attended.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!