Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died this Saturday at the age of 95 at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in the Vatican, where he had lived for about ten years. Benedict XVI, whose birth name is Joseph Ratzinger, was elected to preside over the fate of the Catholic Church in 2005, succeeding John Paul II. He resigned in 2013 and has since been Pope Emeritus.
“The body of Pope Emeritus will be in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican for the farewell of the faithful” from Monday, reveals the press office of the Holy See.
Joseph Aloïs Ratzinger was born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, a German village in Upper Bavaria, next to the Inn river and close to the Austrian border. He was baptized at just four hours old, at 8.30 am, because, say some biographies, he was thin and his parents feared he would die. It was Holy Saturday and, at the time, the Easter Vigil party did not yet exist, so the water that would later be used, throughout the year, in all baptisms, was blessed in the morning. Ratzinger was the first child to receive this “new water”, as the Church calls it, which was considered, says Ratzinger himself in his autobiography, “an important premonitory sign”.
His parents were called Maria and Joseph and they had already had a girl – Maria, like her mother – and another boy, Georg. The baby who would become Pope was named after a paternal great-uncle, who later had a doctorate in theology and was a member of the regional parliament.
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