Former Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI passes away at 95 in Vatican city

Former Pope Benedict, who resigned in 2013 to become the first pope to do so in 600 years, passed away on December 31 at the age of 95 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican, according to a spokesman for the Holy See. 

“With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican. Further information will be provided as soon as possible,” the spokesman said in a written statement.

On February 11, 2013, the 85-year-old Benedict stunned the world with a Latin-language declaration of his retirement, turning into the first pope in quite a while to do as such. He claimed that his lack of strength and advanced age prevented him from carrying out the duties of his position.

Benedict's pontificate was marked by a profound understanding of the challenges to the Church in the face of growing ideological aggression, not least from an increasingly secular Western mindset, both within and outside the Church. He was widely recognized as one of the top theologians in the Catholic Church. In a homily just prior to the 2005 conclave that elected him pope, he famously warned about the "dictatorship of relativism.

"Born in a small village in Bavaria called Marktl am Inn on April 16, 1927, the future pope grew up in a region of Germany long known as a stronghold of Marian devotion and piety. He was the third and youngest child of Joseph and Maria Ratzinger.

The rise of the Nazi party, which he described as "sinister" and that "banished God and thus became impervious to anything true and good," overshadowed his youth in the nearby Bavarian town of Traunstein.
Ratzinger and his older brother Georg resumed their studies for the priesthood, first in Freising and then in Munich, following a brief forced conscription into the German army at the end of the Second World War that lasted for two months.

Ratzinger completed his doctoral studies in theology and went on to become a university teacher and vice president at the prestigious University of Regensburg in Bavaria. He was ordained a priest with his brother on June 29, 1951. Cardinal Joseph Frings, the archbishop of Cologne, invited him to serve as an expert, or peritus, at the Second Vatican Council due to his reputation as an intellectual. He rose to prominence as a theologian very quickly.

He was made archbishop of Munich and Freising by Pope Paul VI in 1977, and later that same year, he presented him with the red cardinal hat.

Ratzinger was appointed prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department responsible for promoting and defending the Catholic faith's teachings, just four years later, in 1981. He held the post until the demise of John Paul II in 2005.

The pope emeritus lived in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, a small convent built inside the walls of Vatican City in 1994, after retiring in 2013. He lived a life of penance and prayer.

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