Hi Georgios
I am not a learned person like your good self and please forgive me if I havent understood your post. I am a Roman Catholic from N Ireland and have great faith in the angels, I pray every day and go to mass regularly.
My family have suffered a share of war, losing my father as an innocent victim in the TROUBLES here in N Ireland, leaving my mother to raise 5 children. Our faith helped us through this and I just dont understand your comments about our pope being an antichrist.
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Main article: Pope Benedict XVI
Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born on 17 April, Holy Saturday, 1927 at Schulstraße 11, at 8:30 in the morning in his parents' home in Marktl am Inn, Bavaria, Germany. He was baptized the same day.
He was the third and youngest child of Joseph Ratzinger Sr, a police officer, and Maria Ratzinger (née Peintner). His mother's family was originally from Bolzano-Bozen Italy.
Pope Benedict XVI's brother, Georg Ratzinger, a priest and former director of the Regensburger Domspatzen choir, is still alive. His sister, Maria Ratzinger, who never married, managed Cardinal Ratzinger's household until her death in 1991. Their great-uncle was the German politician Georg Ratzinger.
The pope's relatives agree that his priestly vocation was apparent from boyhood. At the age of five, Ratzinger was in a group of children who welcomed the visiting Cardinal Archbishop of Munich with flowers. Struck by the Cardinal's distinctive garb, he later announced the very same day that he wanted to be a cardinal.
Following his fourteenth birthday in 1941, Ratzinger was enrolled in the Hitler Youth - as membership was required for all 14-year old German boys after December 1939 — but was an unenthusiastic member and refused to attend meetings. His father was a bitter enemy of Nazism, believing it conflicted with the Catholic faith, according to biographer John L Allen Jr.
In 1941, one of Ratzinger's cousins, a 14-year-old boy with Down Syndrome, was killed by the Nazi regime in its campaign of eugenics. In 1943 while still in seminary, he was drafted at age 16 into the German anti-aircraft corps. Ratzinger then trained in the German infantry, but a subsequent illness precluded him from the usual rigours of military duty. As the Allied front drew closer to his post in 1945, he deserted back to his family's home in Traunstein after his unit had ceased to exist, just as American troops established their headquarters in the Ratzinger household.
As a German soldier, he was put in a POW camp but was released a few months later at the end of the War in summer 1945. He reentered the seminary, along with his brother Georg, in November of that year.
On April 19 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger was elected as the successor to Pope John Paul II on the second day of the papal conclave after 4 ballots. Cardinal Ratzinger had hoped to retire peacefully and said that "At a certain point, I prayed to God 'please don't do this to me'...Evidently, this time He didn't listen to me. On his first appearance at the balcony of St Peter's Basilica, Benedict's first words to the crowd, given in Italian before he gave the traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing in Latin, were:
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Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the Cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble labourer in the vineyard of the Lord. The fact that the Lord knows how to work and to act even with insufficient instruments comforts me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers. In the joy of the Risen Lord, confident of his unfailing help, let us move forward. The Lord will help us, and Mary, His Most Holy Mother, will be on our side. Thank you. |
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Ratzinger chose the Benedict, which in Latin means "the blessed", in honor of Pope Benedict XV who was Pope during the 1st World War, during which time he passionately pursued peace between the warring nations.
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Filled with sentiments of awe and thanksgiving, I wish to speak of why I chose the name Benedict. Firstly, I remember Pope Benefice XV, that courageous prophet of peace, who guided the Church through turbulent times of war. In his footsteps I place my ministry in the service of reconciliation and harmony between peoples. Additionally, I recall St Benedict of Nursia, whose life evokes the Christian roots of Europe. I ask him to help us all to hold firm to the centrality of Christ in our Christian life: May Christ always take first place in our thoughts and actions.
As you say Georgios "What ever happens we will be friends respecting each other in faith and beliefs" God Bless from
Fionnuala
N Ireland
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