User:Ciara10469

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has been chosen as the new Pope in Vatican City at Saint Peter’s Square April 19, 2005. He took the name pope benedict XVI. He was apart of an -Nazi but turned his ways around and became a pope. Joseph Ratzinger was born April 16, 1927 in Marktl am Inn in Bavaria, anti Germany. He was the son of a police officer who was an anti-Nazi. In 1937 Joseph father retired and settled in the town of Traunstein. When Joseph turned 14 in 1941, he joined the Hitler Youth, as all young men in Germany were supposed to be doing the Third Reich after 1938. Ratzinger was a member who refused to attend any of the meetings. In 1943 at the age 16, he and the rest of class were responsible for guarded a B.M.W. plant outside Munich. After being shipped back to Bavaria, He and his brother Georg entered a catholic seminary. In March 1977 Ratzinger was named archbishop of Munich and Freising. The following June he was named a cardinal by Pope Paul VI and one of  only three candidates.