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Learn why Benedict XVI was known as “God’s Rottweiler”

Benedict XVI was born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger on April 16, 1927, in the village of Marktl, in southern Germany, near Austria.

Ratzinger became a priest in 1951 and gained attention as a liberal theological adviser at the 1962 Second Vatican Council that led to profound church reform.

However, the Marxism and atheism of the 1968 student protests across Europe led him to become more conservative to defend the faith against growing secularism.

After stints as professor of theology and then archbishop of Munich, Ratzinger was appointed in 1981 to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), successor to the Inquisition, where he earned the epithet “God’s Rottweiler”.

He and Pope John Paul II agreed that traditional doctrine should be restored in the Church after a period of experimentation.

Ratzinger first turned his attention to the “liberation theology” popular in Latin America, ordering the year-long silence in 1985 of the Brazilian friar Leonardo Boff, whose writings were attacked for using Marxist ideas.

In the 1990s, Ratzinger pressed theologians, particularly in Asia, who saw non-Christian religions as part of God’s plan for humanity.

A 2004 document from Ratzinger’s office denounced “radical feminism” as an ideology that undermined the family and blurred the natural differences between men and women.

As pope from 2005, Benedict sought to show the world the gentler side of his nature, but he never achieved John Paul II’s “rock star” status or seemed particularly comfortable in the role.

Source: CNN Brasil

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