Until 31 December 2022, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI lived in his residence at the Vatican and as a former Pope of the Roman Catholic church.
Profile Summary
•Full name
Joseph Alois Ratzinger
•Date of Birth
April 16, 1927
Holy Saturday
•Place of Birth
Marktl am Inn, Germany
Diocese of Passau
•Position
Bishop of Rome and head of the Roman Catholic Church (2005–13).
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is notably known to be the first Pope to resign in office so since the time of Gregory XII in 1415.
Before his election as Pope Benedict’s lead a distinguished career as a theologian and as a prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith of the Catholic Church.
During his reign, His papacy faced several challenges, including a decline in vocations and church attendance, divisive debates concerning the direction of the Church.
Early Life
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s father was a policeman while his mother a hotel cook. He was the youngest of three children.
He spent his childhood and adolescence in Traunstein, a small village near the Austrian border, thirty kilometres from Salzburg.
In this environment, which he himself has defined as “Mozartian”, he received his Christian, cultural and human formation.
Pope Joined the Hitler youth in 1941 and after the war, continued his education in the seminary.
His priestly Journey
He was ordained a priest in June 1951 and was awarded a doctorate in theology at the University of Munich in 1953.
Then after earning his teaching license in 1957, he taught dogma and theology at the higher school of philosophy and theology in Freising until 1959, before moving to the University of Bonn (1959–69) and also teaching at universities in Münster (1963–66) and—at the invitation of the theologian Hans Küng—Tübingen (1966–69).
In 1969 he moved to the University of Regensburg, where he later became vice president.
The Pope has a number of important theological works to his name. Most this works were written during his long academic career and attracted the attention of the then archbishop of the cologne, Joseph Frings.
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Some of them include:
•Introduction to Christianity (1968)
•Dogma and Revelation (1973).
In March 1977 Pope Benedict was appointed archbishop of Munich and Freising by Paul VI, who bestowed the cardinal’s hat on him three months later.
In 1978, he took part in the Conclave of the 25 and 26 agreement which elected John Paul II.
He was the relator of the V ordinary General Assembly of the Synod is Bishops which took place in 1980.
In 1983, he as a delegate president of the VI ordinary General Assembly of 1983.
On November 25, 1981, he was made prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by his friend Pope John Paul II (1978–2005).
The pope and his prefect shared a similar history, having lived under totalitarian regimes, and their views concerning the church were substantially the same. And for more than two decades, Pope Benedict was the pope’s closest adviser.
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Pope
On 19 April 2005, he was elected as the 265th Pope of the Roman Catholic church.
He was the oldest person to be elected Pope since 1730, and had been a Cardinal for a longer period of time than any Pope since 1724.
Pope Benedict sat as the Pope until 11 February 2013, when he announced his decision to resign from the Petrine ministry with these words:
“After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.
I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering.
However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.
For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter.”
His tenure came to an end on 28 February 2013.
Honorary Doctorate
He received numerous honorary doctorates before his death:
College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, (Minnesota, USA) 1984
Catholic University of Lima (Peru)1986
Catholic University of Eichstätt (Germany) 1987
Catholic University of Lublin (Poland) 1988
University of Navarre (Pamplona, Spain)1998
LUMSA (Libera Università Maria Santissima Assunta) of Rome 1999
Faculty of Theology of the University of Wrocław in Poland 2000