About Me
Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born on Holy Saturday, at Schulstrasse 11, his parents' home in Marktl am Inn, Bavaria. He was baptized the same day. He was the third and youngest child of Joseph Ratzinger, Sr., a police officer, and his wife, Maria Ratzinger (nee Peintner), who worked as a domestic and whose family were from the South Tyrol (today part of Italy). His father served in both the Bavarian State Police (Landespolizei) and the German 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 Sturmabteilung forced the family to move several times." 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. The pope's brother, Georg, said: "Our father was a bitter enemy of Nazism because he believed it was in conflict with our faith."Pope Benedict's brother, Georg, a priest and former director of the Regensburger Domspatzen choir, is still living. His sister, Maria Ratzinger, who never married, managed his household until her death in 1991. Their great uncle Georg Ratzinger was a priest and member of the Reichstag, as the German national Parliament was then called. The pope's relatives agree that his vocation to serve as a priest was apparent since childhood. 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 costume, later that day he announced he wanted to be a cardinal. (See also Early life of Pope Benedict XVI.)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?'.When Ratzinger turned fourteen, he was forced by law to join the Hitler Youth (membership was legally required from December 1936.) According to the National Catholic Reporter correspondent and biographer John Allen, Ratzinger was an unenthusiastic member who refused to attend meetings. Ratzinger has mentioned that a Nazi mathematics professor arranged reduced tuition payments for him at seminary. This normally required documentation of attendance at Hitler Youth activities; however, according to Ratzinger, his sympathetic professor arranged things so that he did not have to attend in order to receive a scholarship.As Cardinal Ratzinger was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the sexual abuse of minors by priests was his responsibility to investigate from 2001, when that charge was given to the CDF by Pope John Paul II.As part of the implementation of the norms enacted and promulgated on April 30, 2001 by Pope John Paul II, on May 18, 2001 Ratzinger sent a Latin letter to every bishop in the Catholic Church reminding them of the strict penalties facing those who revealed confidential details concerning enquiries into allegations against priests of certain grave ecclesiastical crimes, including sexual abuse, reserved to the jurisdiction of the CDF. The letter extended the prescription (statute of limitations) for these crimes to ten years. However, when the crime is sexual abuse of a minor, the "prescription begins to run from the day on that which the minor completes the eighteenth year of age."Lawyers acting for two alleged victims of abuse in Texas claim that by sending the letter the cardinal conspired to obstruct justice. However, the letter did not discourage victims from reporting the abuse itself to the police; the secrecy related to the internal investigation. "The letter said the new norms reflected the CDF's traditional “exclusive competence†regarding delicta graviora—Latin for “graver offenses.†According to canon law experts in Rome, reserving cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors to the CDF is something new. In past eras, some serious crimes by priests against sexual morality, including pedophilia, were handled by that congregation or its predecessor, the Holy Office, but this has not been true in recent years."The promulgation of the norms by Pope John Paul II and the subsequent letter by the then Prefect of the CDF were published in 2001 in Acta Apostolicae Sedis which, in accordance with the Code of Canon Law, is the Holy See's official journal, disseminated monthly to thousands of libraries and offices around the world.In 2002, Ratzinger told the Catholic News Service that "less than one percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type." Opponents saw this as ignoring the crimes of those who committed the abuse; others saw it as merely pointing out that this should not taint other priests who live respectable lives. A report by the Catholic Church itself estimated that some 4,450 of the Roman Catholic clergy who served between 1950 and 2002 have faced credible accusations of abuse. His Good Friday reflections in 2005 were interpreted as strongly condemning and regretting the abuse scandals, which largely put to rest the speculation of indifference. Shortly after his election, he told Francis Cardinal George, the Archbishop of Chicago, that he would attend to the matter.
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, the most important German pope of the Middle Ages, known for instituting major reforms during his pontificate.Cardinal Ratzinger had hoped to retire peacefully and said that "At a certain point, I prayed to God 'please don't do this to me'...Evidently, this time He didn't listen to me."Before his first appearance at the balcony of Saint Peter's Basilica after becoming pope, he was announced by the Jorge Cardinal Medina Estévez, protodeacon of the College of Cardinals. Cardinal Medina 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 with the traditional Habemus Papam announcement in Latin.
