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
Aloisius Joseph Muench calls the work a "critical contribution to the growing research on the question of the Roman Catholic Church's policies and actions with regard to the Holocaust during World War II". Prof. Kevin Spicer of Stonehill College calls the work an "insightful and well-researched examination". Although Prof. John Conway of the University of British Columbia praises her use of the Muench papers, he notes that "her book suffers from the inaccessibility of the Vatican's records, since the papers for the reign of Pius XII are still-regrettably-closed". Aloisius Joseph Muench Aloisius Joseph Muench (February 18, 1889 – February 15, 1962) was an