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 by the asteroid's first discoverer, Lutz Schmadel. The approved naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 23 May 2000 (). 8661 Ratzinger 8661 Ratzinger, provisional designation , is an Eoan asteroid from the outer region of the asteroid belt, approximately 20 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 14 October 1990, by German astronomers Lutz Schmadel and Freimut Börngen at the Karl Schwarzschild Observatory in Tautenburg, eastern Germany. The asteroid was named after Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI. "Ratzinger" is a member of the Eos family (), the largest asteroid family in the outer