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Home > Countries of World > List of Popes > The New Pope
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The New Pope
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Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
St. Paul, 2 Tim 4:2-5
Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger)
- 1927 Joseph Ratzinger is born on April 16, Holy Saturday in Marktl am Inn, Germany and is baptized the same day.
Ratzinger admits it is not easy to say what his 'hometown' is. As a rural policeman, his father was transferred frequently, and his family was continually on the road.
- 1929 Ratzinger's family moves to Tittmoning, a small town on the Salzach River, on
the Austrian border.
- 1932 December: Due to his father's outspoken criticism of the Nazis, Ratzinger's family is forced to relocate to Auschau am Inn, at the foot of the Alps.
- 1937 Ratzinger's father retires and his family moves to Hufschlag, outside the city of Traunstein, where Josef would spend most of his years as a teenager. Here he begins classes at the local gymnasium for classical languages, where he studies Latin and Greek.
- 1939 Ratzinger enters the minor seminary in Traunstein, the initial step of his ecclesiastical career.
- 1943 Ratzinger, along with the rest of his seminary class, is drafted into the Flak [anti- aircraft corps]. He is still allowed to attend classes at the Maximilians-Gymnasium in Munich three days a week.
- 1944 September: Having reached military age, Ratzinger is released from the Flak and returns home, only to be drafted into labor detail under the infamous Austrian Legion.
November: Ratzinger undergoes basic training with the German infantry. Due to illness he finds himself exempt from most of the rigors of military duty.
- 1945 Spring (end of April or beginning of May): As the Allied front draws closer, Ratzinger deserts the army and heads home to Traunstein.
When the Americans finally arrive at his village, they choose to establish their headquarters in the Ratzinger house.
Josef is identified as a German soldier and incarcerated in a POW camp.
June 19: Ratzinger is released and returns home to Traunstein, followed by his brother Georg in July.
November: Ratzinger and his brother Georg re-enter the seminary.
- 1947 Ratzinger enters the Herzogliches Georgianum, a theological institute associated with the University of Munich.
- 1951 June 29: Georg and Josef Ratzinger are ordained into the priesthood by Cardinal Faulhaber, in the Cathedral at Freising,
on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.
- 1953 July: Ratzinger receives his doctorate in theology from the University of Munich. In connection with his doctoral studies he produces his first important work: Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche [People and House of God in Augustine's doctrine of the Church].
- 1959 April 15: Ratzinger begins lectures as full professor (one holding a chair) of fundamental theology at the University of Bonn.
August 23: Ratzinger's father passes away.
- 1962 - 1965 Ratzinger is present during all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council as a peritus or chief theological advisor to
Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne, Germany.
- 1963 Ratzinger moves to the University of Münster.
Dec 16: Ratzinger's mother passes away.
- 1966 Ratzinger takes a second chair in dogmatic theology at the University of Tübingen. His appointment is vigorously supported and secured by fellow professor Hans Küng.
- 1968 A wave of student uprisings sweeps across Europe, and Marxism quickly becomes the dominant intellectual system at Tübingen, indoctrinating not only his students but many of the faculty as well. Witnessing the subordination of religion to Marxist political ideology. Ratzinger observes:
There was an instrumentalization by ideologies that were tyrannical, brutal, and cruel. That experience made it clear to me that the abuse of faith had to be resisted precisely if one wanted to uphold the will of the Council.
- 1969 Scandalized by his encounter with radical ideology at Tübingen, Ratzinger moves back to Bavaria to take a teaching position at the University of Regensburg. He eventually becomes dean and vice president and later, theological advisor to the German bishops.
- 1972 Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henry De Lubac and others launch the Catholic theological journal 'Communio', a quarterly review of Catholic theology and culture.
- 1977 March 24 Ratzinger is named Archbishop of Munich and Freising. He is ordained May 28.
June 27 Ratzinger is elevated to Cardinal of Munich by Pope Paul VI.
- 1980 Ratzinger is named by Pope John Paul II to chair the special Synod on the Laity. Shortly after, the pope asks him to head the Congregation for Catholic Education. Ratzinger declines, feeling he shouldn't leave his post in Munich too soon.
- 1981 November 25 Ratzinger accepts Pope John Paul II's invitation to take over as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
whose mission is to "to promote and safeguard the doctrine on the faith and morals throughout the Catholic world" (John Paul II).
As Grand Inquisitor for Mother Rome, Ratzinger kept himself busy in service to the Truth: correcting theological error, silencing dissenting theologians, and stomping down heresy wherever it may rear its ugly head -- and, consequently, has received somewhat of a notorious reputation among the liberal media and 'enlightened' intellegensia of pseudo-Catholic universities.
- 19 April 2005 Appointed Pope, takes the name POPE BENEDICT XVI
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