Is Pope Benedict Still Alive: Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger was born on Holy Saturday, April 16, 1927, at 8:30 a.m. at his parent’s home on Schulstraße 11 in Marktl, Bavaria, Germany. The same day, he was baptized.
He is the third and youngest child of Joseph Ratzinger Sr., a police officer, and Maria Ratzinger (née Peintner). His grand-uncle was the German priest and politician Georg Ratzinger. South Tyrol was where his mother’s family came from (now in Italy).
Georg Ratzinger, Benedict’s older brother, was a Catholic priest and used to lead the Regensburger Domspatzen choir. Maria Ratzinger, who never married, took care of Cardinal Ratzinger’s home until she died in 1991.
Ratzinger was five years old when he was part of a group of children who gave flowers to the visiting Cardinal Archbishop of Munich, Michael von Faulhaber. He decided later that day to be a cardinal after seeing the cardinal’s unique clothes. In 2009, the elementary school he attended in Aschau am Inn was renamed after him.
Is Pope Benedict Still Alive?
Pope Benedict is still alive, but like any 95-year-old, he is frail. In December 2020, it was said that he or she had trouble speaking. Since he stepped down as pope in 2013, Benedict, who is now 95, has been living in the Vatican.
The lawyers had to find out who knew what and what they did with that information. People have been paying attention to when Benedict was archbishop, from 1977 to 1982, when he was called Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
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How Did Pope Benedict Start His Academic Career?
Ratzinger’s first job was as a priest at the Munich parish of St. Martin in Moosach in 1951. Ratzinger started teaching at the University of Bonn in 1959. His first lecture was called “The God of Faith and the God of Philosophy.” He went to the University of Münster in 1963.
During this time, he participated in the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and worked as Cardinal Frings of Cologne’s peritus (theological consultant). He was seen as a reformer during the council because he worked with theologians like Hans Küng and Edward Schillebeeckx.
Ratzinger grew to like Karl Rahner, a well-known academic theologian of the Nouvelle Théologie who supported church reform and became a hero to Ratzinger. Ratzinger was put in charge of dogmatic theology at the University of Tübingen in 1966.
He worked with Hans Küng there. In his 1968 book, Introduction to Christianity, he said that the pope should listen to different voices in the church before deciding. He also said that the papacy is not an essential thing in the church.
During this time, he moved away from the atmosphere of Tübingen and the Marxist tendencies of the student movement of the 1960s, which quickly became more extreme in 1967 and 1968, leading to a series of disturbances and riots in April and May 1968.
Ratzinger saw that these changes and others, like his students’ lessening respect for authority, were linked to a move away from traditional Catholic teachings. Even though he was a reformer, his ideas became more and more different from the liberal ideas that were becoming popular in theological circles. Rev.
Theodore Hesburgh asked him to join the theology faculty at the University of Notre Dame. He turned down the offer because he didn’t think his English was good enough. Some people, like Küng, see this as a move toward conservatism.
However, Ratzinger himself said in an interview in 1993, “I don’t see any change in my theological views over the years.” Ratzinger kept defending the work of the Second Vatican Council, including Nostra Aetate, the document on respecting other religions, ecumenism, and the declaration of the right to freedom of religion.
Later, as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger gave the most straightforward explanation of how the Catholic Church feels about other religions in the 2000 document Dominus Iesus. This document also explains how Catholics can have “ecumenical dialogue” with other faiths.
While at Tübingen University, Ratzinger wrote articles for the reformist theological journal Concilium. However, he wrote about less reformist topics than other contributors to the magazine, such as Küng and Schillebeeckx. In 1969, Ratzinger moved back to Bavaria and went to the University of Regensburg.
In 1972, he helped Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Walter Kasper, and others start the theological journal Communio. Communio is an essential journal of modern Catholic theological thought. It is now published in seventeen languages, including German, English, and Spanish.
Until he became pope, he was one of the most frequent contributors to the journal. In 1976, he said that the Augsburg Confession could be seen as a statement of Catholic beliefs. Some of Benedict’s former students, like Christoph Schonborn, became his close friends, and some of his former students still get together to talk.
From 1976 to 1977, he was Vice President of the University of Regensburg. He was named a Prelate of Honor of His Holiness on May 26, 1976. If you believe this is interesting, please discuss it with the other people you know. Visit the website Lighthousejournal.org for the most recent news and updates regarding famous people.
For almost 4 years, Jason Martin has been a freelance writer for newspapers, journals, blogs, books, and online material. He covers the most recent news as well as many other topics.