The Gentle Watchdog

The man chosen as pope Tuesday grew up in the foothills of southern Germany during the rise of Nazism and as a young man supported theological reform. But he later embraced a rigid conservatism to battle what he saw as threats from secularism and leftist politics.

The son of a Bavarian police officer, Joseph Ratzinger, 78, is known as a gifted yet polarizing intellectual. For nearly 25 years, he served as the Vatican’s chief enforcer of doctrine, articulating the church’s opposition to abortion, homosexuality, religious pluralism and Latin America’s “liberation theology” movement.

Though he is known to some in Germany as “Der Panzerkardinal” for his attacks on dissent, theologians and religion analysts say Ratzinger’s life can be parsed into three phases: his devout youth; his university days and participation in the Second Vatican Council; and his determination in his later years, with the support of Pope John Paul II, to reinvigorate conservative Catholic thought amid rising secularism, materialism and globalization.

“You can say there is the young Ratzinger, the middle Ratzinger and the old Ratzinger,” said Rainer Kampling, a Catholic theologian at Berlin’s Free University. “The older Ratzinger has a great fear that the Catholicism of his youth is under threat by Marxist and secular forces. I think he’s rooted too much in the 20th century and not enough in the 21st.”

Like John Paul II, Ratzinger grew up in the caldron of World War II and came of age as the Cold War reached across Europe.

Born in April 1927 in the town of Marktl am Inn, Ratzinger spent his adolescent years in the Bavarian city of Traunstein. His family opposed the rise of the Nazi Party in the 1930s, but Ratzinger did not join resistance movements, and like most German teenagers in the early 1940s, he became a member of a Hitler Youth group. At the age of 17, he was assigned to assist an antiaircraft unit, interrupting his seminary studies.

John L. Allen Jr.’s biography, “Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican’s Enforcer of Faith,” describes how the war and Hitler’s campaign against Jews pervaded his hometown.

“The horrors of the Reich were right there in Traunstein, staring Ratzinger in the face, just outside the door of the gymnasium or across the seminary playing field,” Allen wrote. “After the Nazi rise to power in 1933, a sign hung over the entrance to the Traunstein Stadplatz, the central square in the city, reading: ‘Do not buy from the Jew. He buys you, farmers, out of house and home.’ On the night of Nov. 9, 1938, Kristallnacht, brownshirt members and other Nazis attacked the homes of Traunstein’s few Jewish citizens.”

Many of the region’s Jewish citizens were either sent to the Dachau concentration camp or fled Germany. Their homes were seized and auctioned off. A few non-Jewish residents sheltered Jews or helped them escape, according to the book.

In a recent interview with German media, Ratzinger’s brother, Georg, also a priest, said it was impossible to resist Nazism. But Allen said the would-be pontiff viewed the church as a buttress against Nazi evils, adding that Ratzinger’s father and the local pastor criticized the Reich.

Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles agreed that Ratzinger’s father was anti-Nazi and said Ratzinger’s membership in the Hitler Youth should not be taken as an indication of Nazi sympathies because membership was mandatory. Hier said his group likes Ratzinger and expects him to continue John Paul II’s outreach to Jews.

In his 1998 memoir, “Milestones,” Ratzinger wrote: “No one doubted that the church was the locus of all our hopes. Despite many human failings, the church was the alternative to the destructive ideology of the [Nazi] rulers; in the inferno that had swallowed up the powerful, she had stood firm with a force coming to her from eternity. It had been demonstrated: The gates of hell will not overpower her.”

Ratzinger was released from the antiaircraft unit in September 1944, according to Allen’s account, and almost immediately was drafted into the German army. He deserted in April or May 1945 and was briefly held as a prisoner of war by U.S. forces near his home in Traunstein.

After Ratzinger was freed by the Americans, he studied at St. Michael’s Seminary in Traunstein, and he and his brother were ordained on the same day in 1951.

Ratzinger went on to study philosophy at the University of Munich and received a doctorate in theology from Freising. An accomplished pianist who enjoys taking long walks in the German mountains, Ratzinger was groomed early as a Catholic intellect.

Even critics call him urbane and cultured, and according to the Vatican, he speaks eight languages, including German, English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

His was a progressive and eloquent voice during the Second Vatican Council, when the church became more open under Pope John XXIII. He helped draft an attack on church laws dealing with heresy, which dated to medieval times. The draft called them a “source of scandal” to the world.

“He worked well at the council and proved himself as a clear thinker,” said Thomas Frauenlob, director at St. Michael’s Seminary in Traunstein.

Ratzinger’s reform-minded tendencies, however, began shifting in the late 1960s. As a professor at Tuebingen University, he opposed Marxist student demonstrations and left the institution for another teaching post closer to his home in Bavaria.

West Germany, like much of the capitalist West, was awash in radical philosophies at the time. University students blamed their parents for the Nazism of the past and sought political upheaval. Leftist extremists sparked a wave of bombings and slayings across the country.

In a 1997 interview with the publication Salt of the Earth, Ratzinger described such political ideologies as “tyrannical, brutal and cruel. That experience made it clear to me that the abuse of the faith had to be resisted.”

In 1972, Ratzinger and other theologians started a Catholic journal, Communio. Five years later, he was named archbishop of Munich and Freising and was elevated to cardinal by Pope Paul VI.

Pope John Paul II assumed the papacy in 1978, and Ratzinger’s intellect and doctrinal writings impressed the new pontiff. In 1980, he appointed Ratzinger to head a Synod on Laity. By this time, John Paul had begun his globe-trotting and was also seeking to centralize church authority in the Vatican and move toward more conservative teachings.

John Paul believed he had found a kindred voice in Ratzinger, but the cardinal was reluctant to leave his post in Munich. In November 1981, however, Ratzinger agreed to John Paul’s request to head the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position he held until this month.

Vibrant and strong in his beliefs, Ratzinger is also known as a quiet, almost shy man, with hard, blue eyes. Friends and critics alike describe him as an engaging man who can discuss topics ranging from classical music to the Gospels.

“Cardinal Ratzinger is known for his gentleness and timidity,” said Mario Marazziti, a spokesman for Community of Sant’ Egidio, a Catholic movement that works with the poor. “When people greeted him crossing St. Peter’s [Square], he seemed almost stunned that people recognized him.”

Father Caesar Atuire, who organizes pilgrimages to the Vatican, said: “Before you meet him, you hear he is ... one of the watchdogs of faith. And then you meet a simple guy, with almost a simple smile on his face, as if he’s scared to hurt anybody.”

But his doctrinal fervor has gained him many detractors and set him against former colleagues, including the liberal German theologian Hans Kung, who was influential in getting Ratzinger hired at Tuebingen University. Ratzinger criticized Kung’s views, and in 1979, the Vatican suspended his license to teach theology.

About one-third of Germany’s population of 82 million is Catholic. As in other European nations, church attendance has dwindled over the last decade, and Ratzinger’s stands against abortion counseling, homosexuality and ecumenical communion services have angered many in this nation, which instigated the Protestant Reformation against the Catholic Church in the 16th century.

A poll this month by Der Spiegel magazine found 36% of Germans were opposed to a Ratzinger papacy and 29% were supportive. Another 17% of the 1,000 people surveyed said they didn’t care.

Some Germans have complained that Ratzinger’s opposition to Catholics sharing communion with Lutherans in ecumenical services has stifled relations between the faiths.

“He’s insulted other religions, and it’s very disappointing,” said Christian Weisner, a leading member of the international We Are the Church movement, which seeks a more open faith.

Weisner and other critics say that the Vatican’s 2000 document “Dominus Jesus” -- which was written chiefly by Ratzinger and asserted the primacy of Catholicism while branding other religious groups deficient -- was a setback in relations with Muslims and other denominations.

“A Ratzinger papacy will not be a symbol of hope,” said Weisner. “We know the Ratzinger style.”

Ratzinger had said in recent years that he would leave the Vatican and return to Bavaria and write. But as he stood Tuesday amid a sea of flickering flash bulbs and looked down from the balcony in his new vestments, his destiny in Rome was set.

In his 1997 autobiography, “About My Life,” Ratzinger wrote of his love for the mountains around his home and reflected on his baptism with the “just consecrated water of the Easter night.”

“To be the first child baptized with the new water has been considered a remarkable act of fate,” he said. “It has always filled me with gratefulness ... because this could only be a symbol of a blessing.”

Times staff writers Geraldine Baum in Rome, Teresa Watanabe in Los Angeles and Christian Retzlaff and Petra Falkenberg in Berlin contributed to this report.

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Ratzinger books

Here are a few of the books by and about the new pope, with their rankings on Amazon.com as of 8:30 p.m. Tuesday:

“Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the Millennium”

Joseph Ratzinger interviewed by Peter Seewald

Amazon.com ranking: 7

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“The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church”

By Joseph Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori

Amazon.com ranking: 11

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“The Spirit of the Liturgy”

By Joseph Ratzinger

Amazon.com ranking: 17

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“Many Religions, One Covenant: Israel, the Church, and the World”

By Joseph Ratzinger

Amazon.com ranking: 24

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“In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall”

By Joseph Ratzinger

Amazon.com ranking: 32

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“Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith”

By John L. Allen Jr.

Amazon.com ranking: 43

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“Behold the Pierced One: An Approach to a Spiritual Christology”

By Joseph Ratzinger

Amazon.com ranking: 162

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“Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion”

By Joseph Ratzinger

Amazon.com ranking: 400

“An Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church”

By Joseph Ratzinger

Amazon.com ranking: 556

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“Theology and the Church: A Response to Cardinal Ratzinger and a Warning to the Whole Church”

By Juan Luis Segundo

Amazon.com ranking: 46,820

Los Angeles Times

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Making of a pope

Events in the life of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI:

April 16, 1927: Born in Marktl am Inn in Germany’s southern region of Bavaria near the Austrian border on the day before Easter. Baptized the same day.

1929: Family moves to the town of Tittmoning.

1932: Family moves to Traunstein after his father has conflicts with local Nazi Party supporters in Tittmoning.

1941: Enrolled against his will in Hitler Youth. Dismissed shortly afterward because of his intention to study for the priesthood.

1943: Drafted as a helper for an antiaircraft unit, serves in a battery defending a BMW plant.

Sept. 10, 1944: Dismissed from the unit but returns home to find draft notice for forced labor.

Sept. 20, 1944: Leaves home to dig antitank trenches.

Nov. 20, 1944: Released from labor and returns home; gets an army draft notice three weeks later.

April-May 1945: Deserts from army and returns home. Captured by Americans as the war ends.

June 19, 1945: Released from a prisoner of war camp, hitchhikes home on a milk truck.

November 1945: Begins studying for the priesthood in Freising.

June 29, 1951: Ordained a priest along with his brother Georg.

1953: Receives a doctorate in theology at the University of Munich.

1959: Begins teaching theology in Freising, the first of several appointments in German universities.

1969: Leaves University of Tuebingen concerned about student unrest and sit-ins that had interrupted his lectures. Takes a teaching job in Regensburg in his native Bavaria, near his brother.

March 1977: Named archbishop of Munich and Freising.

June 1977: Elevated to rank of cardinal by Pope Paul VI.

November 1981: Summoned to Rome as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul II.

1992: Completes a six-year project on preparing a new catechism.

November 2002: Elected dean of the College of Cardinals.

April 19, 2005: Elected Pope Benedict XVI.

Sources: Associated Press, Holy See Press Office

Los Angeles Times