Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has died. He was ninety-five years old.
Benedict XVI was born Joseph Ratzinger in 1927 in Marktl, Bavaria, Germany, and lived his early life in the nearby town of Traunstein. Ratzinger and his family maintained their Catholic faith even during Nazi rule of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when the church was subject to official hostility.
Ratzinger entered seminary at the age of twelve and attended until it was closed three years later by the German military. He was conscripted by law into the Hitler Youth when he turned fourteen in 1941, but refused to attend the required meetings. At age sixteen he was conscripted into the German anti-aircraft corps and later underwent infantry training, but deserted his military post in 1945 and returned home shortly before Germany fell to Allied invasion. Because he had served in the German military, he was briefly held by the Allies as a prisoner of war.
Ratzinger and his brother Georg were both ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1951. As priest, he served as a parish chaplain and later as a university lecturer and theologian. He was a participant in the Second Vatican Council, a theological consultant to Cardinal Frings of Cologne, and eventually Vice President of the University of Regensburg. Ratzinger was ordained a bishop in 1977 and was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising, adopting “cooperators of the truth” as his episcopal motto. Later that same year he was named a cardinal, and Ratzinger participated in the two 1978 conclaves that elected Pope John Paul I and Pope John Paul II respectively.
Pope John Paul II appointed Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1982, a role he held until was elected pope in 2005. The Congregation was founded in 1542 to “spread sound Catholic doctrine and defend those points of Christian tradition which seem in danger because of new and unacceptable doctrines.” In this role, he presided over the commission that prepared the current version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
