section_path: Early life: 1927–1951/Encounter with Romano Guardini
section_name: Encounter with Romano Guardini
paragraph_text: Encounter with Romano Guardini
  
  From 1946 to 1951, he pursued studies in philosophy and theology at the University of Munich and at the Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule in Freising. During this time, Ratzinger was deeply influenced by the ideas of Italian-German philosopher Romano Guardini, who was teaching in Munich while Ratzinger was a student there. The intellectual affinity between these two thinkers, who would later become decisive figures for the twentieth-century Catholic Church, was preoccupied with rediscovering the essentials of Christianity: Guardini wrote The Essence of Christianity in 1938, while Ratzinger penned Introduction to Christianity, three decades later in 1968. Guardini inspired many in the Catholic social-democratic tradition, particularly the Communion and Liberation movement in the New Evangelization encouraged under the papacy of the Polish Pope John Paul II. Ratzinger wrote an introduction to a 1996 reissue of Guardini's 1954 work The Lord.
  
  From 1946 to 1951, he pursued studies in philosophy and theology at the University of Munich and at the Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule in Freising. During this time, Ratzinger was deeply influenced by the ideas of Italian-German philosopher Romano Guardini, who was teaching in Munich while Ratzinger was a student there. The intellectual affinity between these two thinkers, who would later become decisive figures for the twentieth-century Catholic Church, was preoccupied with rediscovering the essentials of Christianity: Guardini wrote The Essence of Christianity in 1938, while Ratzinger penned Introduction to Christianity, three decades later in 1968. Guardini inspired many in the Catholic social-democratic tradition, particularly the Communion and Liberation movement in the New Evangelization encouraged under the papacy of the Polish Pope John Paul II. Ratzinger wrote an introduction to a 1996 reissue of Guardini's 1954 work The Lord.