Pope Benedict XVI Pope Benedict XVI Pope Benedict XVI (; ; ; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger; ; 16 April 1927) served as Pope of the Catholic Church and as sovereign of the Vatican City State from 2005 until his resignation in 2013. Benedict's election as pope occurred in the 2005 papal conclave that followed the death of Pope John Paul II. The Vatican announced his withdrawal by bestowing him the title Pope Emeritus shortly after his resignation. Ordained as a priest in 1951 in his native Bavaria, Ratzinger had established himself as a highly regarded university theologian by the late 1950s and was
8661 Ratzinger months (1,903 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.03 and an inclination of 11° with respect to the ecliptic. In October 1969, it was first identified as at Crimea–Nauchnij. The body's observation arc begins at Leoncito in 1974, when it was identified as , 16 years prior to its official discovery observation at Tautenburg. According to the survey carried out by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, "Ratzinger" measures 13.4 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.09, while a generic estimate based on its absolute magnitude of 12.3 and a typical