Pope Benedict XVI

Joseph Ratzinger was born in 1927 in Marktl, Bavaria, Germany, the son of a police officer. As a teenager he was enrolled in the Hitler Youth, as membership was compulsory, and he was drafted into an anti-aircraft unit late in the Second World War. After the war he studied philosophy and theology and was ordained a priest in 1951, together with his brother Georg. He taught theology at several German universities and served as an adviser at the Second Vatican Council. In 1977 he was made archbishop of Munich and a cardinal, and from 1981 he headed the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope John Paul II. He was elected pope in 2005 and took the name Benedict XVI. His writings include three encyclicals and a three-volume book on Jesus of Nazareth. His 2006 lecture at the University of Regensburg on faith and reason drew wide attention. He resigned in 2013, the first pope to do so in centuries, and died in Vatican City in 2022.

Pope Benedict XVI is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Theologian who served as bishop of Rome and head of the Roman Catholic Church from 2005 to 2013. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica