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 to be "greedy, wilfully destructive, sexual predators, thieves, and anarchists involved in leftist activities". Muench commissioned Father Coleman Barry—whom he had met in Munich in 1953—to write his biography in 1961. Muench was a long-time benefactor of Barry, ever since he had reviewed Barry's first book, "The Catholic Church and the German Americans" for the "Catholic Historical Review". Barry interviewed Muench extensively in Fargo in the summer of 1961 and thereafter interviewed his family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances in Milwaukee, Fargo, Germany, and Rome. Barry published "American Nuncio; Cardinal Aloisius Muensch" in 1969 and it remains the only biography of