The pope’s secretary, Msgr. George Gaenswein, celebrated his 50th birthday a day or two ago – the European press took note of this because they take note of much of what the Msgr. does because well, he’s that good-looking man who’s always standing behind the Pope, taking his glasses, and handing him his papers. The Papa Ratzinger Forum posts a translation of an interview w/Gaenswein, with some interesting tidbits:
When you look back at the first year of Benedict XVI’s Pontificate, what stands out?
Certainly, the fact that the Holy Father in his words and in his actions, in his whole being, wishes to demonstrate that faith brings joy to life and for life, that joy is its most important sign, and so this runs like a thread through everything that he does, that he says, everything that one perceives in him, that one draws from him; and he wants this joy in faith to be infectious!
Were you surprised by the theme of love that he chose for his first encyclical?
Not particularly. That first encyclical has found a very very great resonance everywhere. Whoever knew Pope Benedict as a theologian, I think, was not really surprised that he chose this theme and expressed and treated it the way he did in the encyclical.
The opening of the archives of St. Michael Seminary in Bavaria, where Benedict XVI studied, confirms that the young Joseph Ratzinger was enlisted in the Hitler-Youth against his will.
The newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports on a research undertaken by German historian Volker Laube, at the request of the Archdiocese of Munich, following criticism in the press about the Pope’s supposed "Nazi past".
The research study, "The Archepiscopal Seminary St. Michael in Traunstein Opens Its Archives" will be published by Schnell & Steiner in Germany. The Munich newspaper ran an advance story about it.
Laube’s research shows that the young seminarian Ratzinger did not willingly join the Nazi youth movement. The archives show that in April 1938, the suppression of scholarships to pupils who were not members of the Hitler Youth placed the Ratzinger family in financial difficulty.
The parents therefore successfully requested a fee reduction for the Ratzinger brothers from Cardinal Michael Faulhaber, then archbishop of Munich.
In 1939, it became obligatory for all young Germans to join the Hitler Youth, but at that time Joseph Ratzinger was only 12 years old. It was not until 1941, on the day he turned 14, that he automatically became enlisted in the movement.
He was classified as a ‘forced member’ (Zwangs-Hitlerjunge) as opposed to those who joined voluntarily who were classified as Stamm-Hitlerjunge.
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