Pope Benedict XVI (
Latin:
Benedictus XVI;
Italian:
Benedetto XVI;
German:
Benedikt XVI; born
Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger;
German pronunciation: [ˈjoːzɛf ˈalɔʏzjʊs ˈʁatsɪŋɐ]; on 16 April 1927) served as
Pope of the
Catholic Church from 2005 until his resignation in 2013. Benedict was elected on 19 April 2005 in a
papal conclave following the death of
Pope John Paul II and was
inaugurated on 24 April 2005.
Ordained as a
priest in 1951 in his native
Bavaria,
Ratzinger established himself as a highly regarded university
theologian by the late 1950s and was appointed a full professor in 1958.
After a long career as an academic and professor of theology at several
German universities, he was appointed
Archbishop of Munich and Freising and
Cardinal by
Pope Paul VI
in 1977, an unusual promotion for someone with little pastoral
experience. In 1981, he settled in Rome when he became Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one of the most important
dicasteries of the
Roman Curia. From 2002 until his election as Pope, he was also
Dean of the College of Cardinals, and as such, the
primus inter pares among the Cardinals. Prior to becoming Pope, he was "a major figure on the
Vatican
stage for a quarter of a century"; he had an influence "second to none
when it came to setting church priorities and directions" as one of John
Paul II's closest confidants.
[2]
He was originally a liberal theologian, but adopted conservative views after 1968.
[3] His prolific
[4] writings defend traditional Catholic doctrine and values. During his papacy, Benedict XVI advocated a return to fundamental
Christian values to counter the increased
secularisation of many
Western countries. He views
relativism's denial of
objective truth, and the denial of
moral truths
in particular, as the central problem of the 21st century. He taught
the importance of both the Catholic Church and an understanding of God's
redemptive love.
[5] Pope Benedict also revived a number of traditions, including elevating the
Tridentine Mass to a more prominent position.
[6] He renewed the relationship between the
Catholic Church and art, promoted the use of
Latin,
[7] and reintroduced traditional papal garments, for which reason he was called "the pope of aesthetics".
[8] He has been described as "the main intellectual force in the Church" since the mid-1980s.
[9]
On 11 February 2013, Benedict announced his resignation in a speech
in Latin before the cardinals, citing a "lack of strength of mind and
body" due to his advanced age.
His resignation became effective on 28 February 2013. He is the first pope to resign since
Pope Gregory XII in 1415, and the first to do so on his own initiative since
Pope Celestine V in 1294. As pope emeritus, Benedict retains the
style of
His Holiness, and the title of
Pope, and continues to dress in the papal colour of white. He was succeeded by
Pope Francis on 13 March 2013, and he moved into the newly renovated
Mater Ecclesiae monastery for his retirement on 2 May 2013.
The birth house of Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger in Marktl, Bavaria
Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger was born on 16 April,
Holy Saturday,
1927, at Schulstraße 11, at 8:30 in the morning in his parents' home in
Marktl, Bavaria, Germany. He was baptised the same day. He was the
third and youngest child of
Joseph Ratzinger, Sr., a police officer, and Maria Ratzinger (née Peintner). His mother's family was originally from
South Tyrol (now in Italy).
[10] Pope Benedict XVI's brother,
Georg Ratzinger, a priest and former director of the
Regensburger Domspatzen
choir, is still alive. His sister, Maria Ratzinger, who never married,
managed Cardinal Ratzinger's household until her death in 1991. Their
grand-uncle was the German politician
Georg Ratzinger. At the age of five, Ratzinger was in a group of children who welcomed the visiting
Cardinal Archbishop of Munich
with flowers. Struck by the cardinal's distinctive garb, he later
announced the very same day that he wanted to be a cardinal. He attended
the elementary school in
Aschau am Inn, which was renamed in his honour in 2009.
[11]
Ratzinger's family, especially his father, bitterly resented the
Nazis, and his father's opposition to Nazism resulted in demotions and harassment of the family.
[12] Following his 14th birthday in 1941, Ratzinger was conscripted into the
Hitler Youth—as membership was required by law for all 14-year-old German boys after March 1939
[13]—but was an unenthusiastic member who refused to attend meetings, according to his brother.
[14] In 1941, one of Ratzinger's cousins, a 14-year-old boy with
Down syndrome, was taken away by the Nazi regime and murdered during the
Action T4 campaign of
Nazi eugenics.
[15] In 1943, while still in seminary, he was drafted into the German anti-aircraft corps as
Luftwaffenhelfer.
[14] Ratzinger then trained in the German infantry.
[16] As the Allied front drew closer to his post in 1945, he deserted back to his family's home in
Traunstein after his unit had ceased to exist, just as American troops established a headquarters in the Ratzinger household.
[17] As a German soldier, he was
interned in a
prisoner of war camp, but released a few months later at the end of the war in May 1945.
[17]
Ratzinger and his brother Georg entered Saint Michael Seminary in Traunstein in November 1945, later studying at the
Ducal Georgianum (
Herzogliches Georgianum) of the
Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. They were both ordained in
Freising on 29 June 1951 by Cardinal
Michael von Faulhaber of Munich. Ratzinger recalled:
...at the moment the elderly Archbishop laid his hands on me, a
little bird – perhaps a lark – flew up from the altar in the high
cathedral and trilled a little joyful song.[18]
Ratzinger's 1953 dissertation was on
St. Augustine and was titled
The People and the House of God in Augustine's Doctrine of the Church. His
habilitation (which qualified him for a professorship) was on
Bonaventure. It was completed in 1957 and he became a professor of Freising College in 1958.
| [show]Ordination history of Pope Benedict XVI |
Academic career: 1951–77
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Theology of Joseph Ratzinger
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Ratzinger became a professor at the
University of Bonn in 1959, his inaugural lecture was on "The God of Faith and the God of Philosophy". In 1963, he moved to the
University of Münster. During this period, he participated in the
Second Vatican Council (1962–65) and served as a
peritus (theological consultant) to
Cardinal Frings of Cologne. He was viewed during the time of the Council as a reformer, cooperating with theologians like
Hans Küng and
Edward Schillebeeckx. Ratzinger became an admirer of
Karl Rahner, a well-known academic theologian of the
Nouvelle Théologie and a proponent of church reform.
In 1966, Ratzinger was appointed to a chair in dogmatic theology at the
University of Tübingen, where he was a colleague of
Hans Küng. In his 1968 book
Introduction to Christianity,
he wrote that the pope has a duty to hear differing voices within the
Church before making a decision, and he downplayed the centrality of the
papacy. During this time, he distanced himself from the atmosphere of
Tübingen and the
Marxist
leanings of the student movement of the 1960s that quickly radicalised,
in the years 1967 and 1968, culminating in a series of disturbances and
riots in April and May 1968. Ratzinger came increasingly to see these
and associated developments (such as decreasing respect for authority
among his students) as connected to a departure from traditional
Catholic teachings.
[19]
Despite his reformist bent, his views increasingly came to contrast
with the liberal ideas gaining currency in theological circles.
[20]
Some voices, among them Küng, deem this a turn towards conservatism,
while Ratzinger himself said in a 1993 interview, "I see no break in my
views as a theologian [over the years]".
[21] Ratzinger continued to defend the work of the Second Vatican Council, including
Nostra aetate, the document on respect of other religions,
ecumenism and the declaration of the right to
freedom of religion. Later, as the
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger most clearly spelled out the Catholic Church's position on other religions in the 2000 document
Dominus Iesus which also talks about the Roman Catholic way to engage in "
ecumenical dialogue". During his time at Tübingen University, Ratzinger published articles in the reformist theological journal
Concilium, though he increasingly chose less reformist themes than other contributors to the magazine such as Küng and Schillebeeckx.
In 1969, he returned to Bavaria, to the
University of Regensburg and co-founded the theological journal
Communio, with
Hans Urs von Balthasar,
Henri de Lubac,
Walter Kasper and others, in 1972.
Communio,
now published in seventeen languages, including German, English and
Spanish, has become a prominent journal of contemporary Catholic
theological thought. Until his election as pope, he remained one of the
journal's most prolific contributors. In 1976, he suggested that the
Augsburg Confession might possibly be recognised as a Catholic statement of faith.
[22][23] Several of Benedict's former students became his confidantes, notably
Christoph Schönborn, and a number of his former students sometimes meet for discussions.
[24][25] He served as Vice President of the University of Regensburg from 1976 to 1977.
[26]
Archbishop of Munich and Freising: 1977–82
Palais Holnstein in Munich, the residence of Benedict as Archbishop of Munich and Freising
On 24 March 1977, Ratzinger was appointed
Archbishop of Munich and Freising. He took as his episcopal motto
Cooperatores Veritatis (Co-workers of the Truth) from
3 John 8, a choice he comments upon in his autobiographical work,
Milestones. In the consistory of the following 27 June, he was named Cardinal-Priest of
Santa Maria Consolatrice al Tiburtino
by Pope Paul VI. By 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. Of these, only he and
William Wakefield Baum took part in the conclave.
[27]
Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: 1981–2005
On 25 November 1981, Pope John Paul II, upon the retirement of
Franjo Šeper, named Ratzinger as the Prefect of the
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the "Sacred Congregation of the
Holy Office", the historical
Roman Inquisition. Consequently, he resigned his post at Munich in early 1982. He was promoted within the College of Cardinals to become
Cardinal Bishop of Velletri-Segni
in 1993 and was made the college's vice-dean in 1998 and dean in 2002.
Just a year after its foundation in 1990 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
joined the
European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg/Austria in 1991.
[28][29]
Ratzinger defended and reaffirmed Catholic doctrine, including teaching on topics such as
birth control, homosexuality and inter-religious dialogue. The theologian
Leonardo Boff, for example, was suspended, while others such as
Matthew Fox
were censured. Other issues also prompted condemnations or revocations
of rights to teach: for instance, some posthumous writings of
Jesuit priest
Anthony de Mello were the subject of a
notification.
Ratzinger and the congregation viewed many of them, particularly the
later works, as having an element of religious indifferentism (
i.e., Christ was "one master alongside others"). In particular,
Dominus Iesus,
published by the congregation in the jubilee year 2000, reaffirmed many
recently "unpopular" ideas, including the Catholic Church's position
that "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name
under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." The document
angered many Protestant churches by claiming that they are not actually
churches, but "ecclesial communities".
[30]
Ratzinger's 2001 letter
De delictis gravioribus clarified the confidentiality of internal church investigations, as defined in the 1962 document
Crimen Sollicitationis, into accusations made against priests of certain crimes, including
sexual abuse. This became a subject of controversy during the
sex abuse scandal.
[31] For 20 years, Ratzinger had been the man in charge of enforcing the document.
[32]
While bishops hold the secrecy pertained only internally, and did not
preclude investigation by civil law enforcement, the letter was often
seen as promoting a coverup.
[33] Later, as pope, he was accused in a lawsuit of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys in
Texas, but sought and obtained
diplomatic immunity from liability.
[34]
On 12 March 1983, Ratzinger, as prefect, notified the lay faithful and the clergy that
Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngo Dinh Thuc had incurred
excommunication latae sententiae for
illicit episcopal consecrations
without the apostolic mandate. In 1997, when he turned 70, Ratzinger
asked Pope John Paul II for permission to leave the Congregation of the
Doctrine of Faith and to become an archivist in the
Vatican Secret Archives and a librarian in the
Vatican Library, but Pope John Paul ll refused his assent.
[35][36
]
