Benedict XVI/Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club
Found the web site www.ratzingerfanclub.com. Although it has not been updated with today's events, it does provide a lot of background on the new Pope. Here are excerpts from the biography:
1927 Ratzinger is born on April 16, Holy Saturday in Marktl am Inn, and is baptized the same day.
1932 December: Due to his father's outspoken criticism of the Nazis, Ratzinger's family is forced to relocate to Auschau am Inn, at the foot of the Alps.
1939 Ratzinger enters the minor seminary in Traunstein, the initial step of his ecclesiastical career.
1943 Ratzinger, along with the rest of his seminary class, is drafted into the Flak [anti-aircraft corps]. He is still allowed to attend classes at the Maximilians-Gymnasium in Munich three days a week.
1944 September: Having reached military age, Ratzinger is released from the Flak and returns home, only to be drafted into labor detail under the infamous Austrian Legion ("fanatical ideologues who tyrannized us without respite").
November: Ratzinger undergoes basic training with the German infantry. Due to illness he finds himself exempt from most of the rigors of military duty.
1945 Spring (end of April or beginning of May): As the Allied front draws closer, Ratzinger deserts the army and heads home to Traunstein. When the Americans finally arrive at his village, they choose to establish their headquarters in the Ratzinger house. Josef is identified as a German soldier and incarcerated in a POW camp.
June 19: Ratzinger is released and returns home to Traunstein, followed by his brother Georg in July.
November: Ratzinger and his brother Georg re-enter the seminary.
1966 Ratzinger takes a second chair in dogmatic theology at the University of Tübingen. His appointment is vigorously supported and secured by fellow professor Hans Küng.
1968 A wave of student uprisings sweeps across Europe, and Marxism quickly becomes the dominant intellectual system at Tübingen, indoctrinating not only his students but many of the faculty as well.
1969 Scandalized by his encounter with radical ideology at Tübingen, Ratzinger moves back to Bavaria to take a teaching position at the University of Regensburg. He eventually becomes dean and vice president and later, theological advisor to the German bishops.
1977 On March 24, Ratzinger is named Archbishop of Munich and Freising.
June 27 - Ratzinger is elevated to Cardinal of Munich by Pope Paul VI.
1980 Ratzinger is named by Pope John Paul II to chair the special Synod on the Laity. Shortly after, the pope asks him to head the Congregation for Catholic Education. Ratzinger declines, feeling he shouldn't leave his post in Munich too soon.
1981 On November 25, Ratzinger accepts Pope John Paul II's invitation to take over as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
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