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
Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who untied the knots’ when it looked as though the document would be shipwrecked by officials from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Cardinal Ratzinger got the agreement back on track by organising a meeting with the Lutheran leaders at his brother’s house in Regensburg. Included in this agreement was the notion that the goal of the ecumenical process is unity in diversity, not structural reintegration. Until her death, Lúcia dos Santos, the last surviving of the three Fatima visionaries, was forbidden to discuss the Fatima revelations publicly unless given leave by Cardinal Ratzinger. He was one of seven