UNITED KINGDOM
London Evening Standard
11 February 2013
Ross Lydall
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was 78 and looking forward to retirement when John Paul II died in 2005 and he found himself next in line to become Pope, despite praying that he be spared the post.
He had been John Paul’s Vatican “fixer” for 24 years, earning himself the nickname “God’s rottweiler” for heading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — once called the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
He was the oldest Pope to take office since Clement XII in 1730 and was renowned as a hardline conservative with views that were to land him in repeated controversy throughout his eight years. Born in Bavaria in 1927, he was the eighth German to become Pope.
But his appointment was overshadowed by the revelation he was a member of the Hitler Youth, though he said this was required of all young Germans at the time. During the Second World War he was drafted into an anti-aircraft unit in Munich.
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