Voices September 18, 2017
Parallels with Benedict XVI, from persecution to Vatican II
By Msgr. Pedro Lopez-Gallo
Msgr. Lopez-Gallo continues his series on the eight Popes who forged his priesthood. This week, he focuses on Pope Benedict XVI.
The Pope I share the closest connection with is Joseph Ratzinger. We were born in the same year, 1927, and entered the seminary the same year, 1939, under the anti-religious regimes of the time – I in Mexico under the Christian persecution of Plutarco E. Calles, he in Germany, under Hitler's Nazi command. We were ordained the same year, 1951, and we both assisted at the ecumenical council Vatican II, 1964-1965 – he accompanying Cardinal Josef Frings of Koln, Germany, and I with Cardinal Eugene Tisserant.
Benedict XVI served as Pope from 2005 to 2013 and is best known for his clear views on Catholicism. Born in Bavaria, he grew up in the post World War I time of reparations as the Nazi regime was gaining power. His father, a determined anti-Nazi, was a policeman and his mother was a hotel cook before she married.
His family moved frequently among villages in rural Bavaria, a deeply Roman Catholic region. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: “Unemployment was rife, battles among the political parties set people against one another,” and as a defence against the Nazi regime, he threw himself into the Catholic Church which he found “a citadel of truth and righteousness against the realm of atheism and deceit.”
He entered preparatory seminary in 1939, but could not avoid the realities of the day and was briefly a member of the Hitler Youth in his early teens, after membership became mandatory in 1941. In 1943, he and fellow seminarians were drafted into the anti-aircraft corps. He has said his unit was attacked by Allied forces that year but he did not take part in that battle because a finger infection had kept him from learning to shoot. After about a year in the anti-aircraft unit, Ratzinger was drafted into the regular military. He told TIME magazine in 1993 that while stationed near Hungary, he saw Hungarian Jews being sent to death camps.
He deserted the army in late April 1945 and was captured by American soldiers and held as a prisoner of war for several months. He turned to theological studies after the war and helped found the influential journal Communio. He returned to the seminary at the University of Munich in the fall of 1945 and was ordained a priest in 1951. Two years later he earned his doctorate and started a long career as an academic and professor of theology in the universities of Freising, Bonn, Tubingen and Regensburg.
At the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Ratzinger served as chief theological expert to Cardinal Josef Frings of Koln, Germany, who was viewed as a reformer during this time. In March 1977, he was named Archbishop of Munich and Freising, and three months later was elevated to cardinal by Pope Paul VI.
John Paul II, in 1981, appointed Cardinal Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In 2002 he was elected Dean of the College of Cardinals. And upon the death of the Polish Pope, he was elevated to the papacy on April 19, 2005.
In 2008, Benedict made his first visit as Pope to the United States, where he spoke out against clerical sexual abuse and delivered an address at the United Nations. That same year, to foster relations and understanding between religions, Benedict addressed the first Catholic-Muslim Forum, a three-day conference of Catholic theologians and Islamic scholars.
On Feb. 11, 2013, at the age of 85, Pope Benedict XVI announced his decision to resign, becoming the first Pope in centuries to step down from this post. He stated: “I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to adequate exercise.”
He went on to explain: “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 St. 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 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 the Bishop of Rome, successor of St. Peter.”
Benedict served his final day as Pope on Feb. 28, 2013. He currently resides in the convent Mater Ecclesiae, in the south-west corner of Vatican City. Though he has no further administrative or official duties and rarely appears in public, on Dec. 8, 2015 he joined Pope Francis as he pushed open the great bronze doors of St. Peter’s Basilica to launch the Holy Year of Mercy.
His frailty prompted Pope Francis to ask the throngs of pilgrims in the piazza to pray for Benedict’s good health and the crowd responded with cheers and applause. Benedict is alive in prayer, playing his piano, and walking in the splendid gardens of the Vatican.