The eighth German Pope - Lang lebe der Papst
On April 19, 2005 78-year-old German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI (Papst Benedikt XVI). No one was more surprised to see a German pope than the Germans themselves. His strict religious views are also nowhere more controversial than in the new pope's homeland, which generally takes a liberal stance in religious matters. (Germany is about evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants, few of whom ever set foot in a church.) Pope Benedict XVI is not the first Bavarian to become pope, but the Bavarian Pope Damasus II held his post for only a month, dying of malaria in 1048.
The successor to John Paul II was born in the small Bavarian town of Marktl am Inn on April 16, 1927. His father was a local policeman.
Young Ratzinger was drafted into the German army during World War II, but he deserted and ended up in an Allied POW camp before he was released. Only six years after the end of the war, Joseph Ratzinger was ordained a Catholic priest on June 29, 1951 in the diocese of Munich/Freising. In March 1977 he was appointed archbishop of Munich, being elevated to cardinal only a few months later.
Ratzinger has also been a professor of theology at several German universities. He held professorships in Bonn, Münster, Tübingen, and Regensburg (in Bavaria). It was at Tübingen that Ratzinger moved to a more conservative position in his political/religious views—in reaction to the liberal and Marxist tendencies he saw there in the late 1960s.
Cardinal Ratzinger moved up consistently and rapidly in the Catholic hierarchy. He is only one of 14 remaining cardinals appointed by Pope Paul VI, but he became one of John Paul II's most trusted confidants. Many observers consider his election as pope a sign of the church's desire to continue the policies of John Paul II. Ratzinger has published about a dozen books related to Catholic theology, and he speaks several languages besides his native German, including Italian and English.
Joseph Ratzinger is the first German pope in about 500 years (depending on how you define "German"). To find previous German popes, you have to go back to the 10th and 11th centuries. Most of the German popes served short terms, dying of disease or being eliminated in papal cabals. Gregor V (996-999) was the first of seven German popes who served up until 1523, when Hadrian VI died. Pope Hadrian VI considered himself German, although he was born in Utrecht, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (das Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation). After that, all the popes were Italian until John Paul II, and now Benedict XVI.
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