THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Ratzinger returns home
Conjectures abound as he fulfills a personal promise
to be by his older brother in case he dies, as he almost failed
to be with sister Maria at her sudden death in Regensburg
by Nico Spuntoni
Translated from

June 20, 2020

18-year-old Joseph Ratzinger, then still considered a POW although he had escaped his US detention camp in Germany, returned home to his family in Hufschlag on the Feast of the Sacred Heart in 1945. Exactly a month later, it was his older brother Georg who came home from Italy where he was serving with the German army towards the end of World War II. It was just as unexpected as Joseph’s homecoming, and the family celebrated by breaking out into the Germany hymn, “Great God, we praise Thee”.

The lives of the brothers Ratzinger had always been in synchrony, like two notes struck together. Once again demonstrated by the sudden and courageous trip to Regensburg undertaken by the 93-year-old Emeritus Pope to be by the bedside of Georg, now seriously ill.

Benedict XVI has not been in Germany since 2012, his third and last trip to Germany as Pope, and not in his native Bavaria since 2006, during his emotion-laden apostolic trip to Bavaria and the places where he grew up and spent his earlier life before coming to Rome. At that time, the then reigning Pope admitted his nostalgia for his beloved Bavaria and could not hide his sadness that the visit would probably be his last trip to the region that was always considered the stronghold of Catholicism in Germany.

But the Lord has willed otherwise. The aging Emeritus Pope landed at Munich airport around noon Thursday, and in a van of Malteser International [the health services arm of the Knights of Malta], proceeded to the Regensburg diocesan seminary, where he is residing during this visit, and which is not far from his brother’s apartment on Luzengasse.

One of the Malteser services is to enable aged persons who are unable to ambulate to visit ailing family members, which illustrates the urgency of a ‘journey that starts the last stage of my pilgrimage on earth’ [as Benedict XVI described his post-Papacy life in his last address as Pope on February 28, 2005] despite his own personal health problems brought on by advanced age.

Upon his arrival in Regensburg, despite streets barricaded by the German police, groups of faithful welcomed him festively, waving the blue-and-white Bavarian flag. He acknowledged them, waving from the van window. He was accompanied by his personal secretary, Mons. Goerg Gaenswein, the new vice-commandant of the Vatican Gendarmerie Davide Giulietti, one of Benedict’s Memores Domini housekeepers, a doctor and nurse, and two Vatican policemen.

On the trip from Munich to Regensburg, he was also accompanied by Regensburg Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer (nominated by him in 2012). Diocesan spokesman Clemens Neck said that the Emeritus appeared ‘radiant’ after his first visit to his brother’s bedside. But he also said that Benedict would not be making any public appearances because he wants this visit to be exclusively private. At the Regensburg seminary, he is occupying the same room he was given during his Apostolic Visit in 2006, which has since been used only by Cardinal Gerhard Mueller on his visits to Regensburg.

There are 26 seminarians and a few other priests living in the seminary but will not be sharing the refectory with the pope, who will be served his meals in a room adjoining his bedroom, joined by Mons. Gaenswein and other members of his delegation from Rome.

Since Benedict became Pope in 2005, and even after he had stepped down in 2013, it was Georg who came to the Vatican regularly – usually during the Christmas holidays till after his birthday on January 15, and in the summer – despite his blindness and difficulty in walking (he had his own nurse to take care of him in the Vatican). The two brothers spent their time together in conversation, listening to music, prayer and a daily promenade to and from the grotto dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes in the Vatican Gardens. But his worsening health and the Covid-19 pandemic led to a forced interruption of those visits, leading Benedict XVI to make the decision to travel to Regensburg upon receiving the news that Georg was in serious condition.

It is reported that Georg spent Thursday morning checking his watch awaiting his brother’s arrival. During Benedict’s first visit Thursday morning, they said Mass together, as they did Friday morning on the Feast of the Sacred Heart. The Emeritus Pope was said to be ‘exhausted’ by his trip from Rome, but ‘incredibly happy’ to be near his brother again, despite some difficulty between the two of them, according to German CNA, because “one is very ill and the other has problems with speaking”.

On Friday, BILD (the German tabloid with the highest circulation in Europe) reported that Benedict XVI could remain in Germany and not return to the Vatican at all. A speculation also advanced by American Vaticanista Edward Pentin who reported in a tweet that the Italian military aircraft that brought Benedict XVI to Germany had returned to Rome immediately.

Matteo Bruni, Vatican press director, said that Benedict XVI would stay in Germany ‘as long as necessary”, about which diocesan spokesman Neck had said, “No one knows the date or time when and if Mons. Ratzinger would be called back to the house of the Father”, when asked about Georg’s condition.

It was known to all that Joseph Ratzinger had always planned to end his own days ‘tranquilly’, as he used to say, in his beloved Bavaria, and particularly in Pentling, the Regensburg suburb where he had built a home where he hoped to retire, with his brother, after ending his tenure as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Both brothers had looked forward to it, to the point that Georg used to take the bus to and from Pentling frequently to make sure that ‘everything was all right’ with the house and report this to his brother.

But St. John Paul II, who considered Ratzinger irreplaceable as his ‘custodian of the faith’, always rejected Ratzinger’s requests to be allowed to retire, a goal he never achieved because he was elected Pope in 2005. Joseph Ratzinger lived in the house in Pentling [since bought by the Regensburg-based Benedict XVI Foundation as a museum and adjunct library] while a professor at the University of Regensburg and always returned to it for regular vacations (usually around Pentecost, All Souls’ Day and the Christmas holidays) while he was Archbishop of Munich, and later, as CDF Prefect).

As she did since he became a a professor at the University of Bonn, his older sister Maria kept house for him. It was her work as a secretary in a lawyer’s office that had enabled the family additional income to afford sending both Georg and Joseph to the seminary in 1937.

Her sudden death in 1991 was probably the saddest trauma to Joseph’s life. All three siblings observed the custom of being together on All Souls’ Day to visit their parents’ grave near Pentling. That year, however, the cardinal could not go with his sister because he was sick. On November 1, she had a cerebral hemorrhage from which she died the same day. Joseph was therefore unable to say goodbye to the sister who had served him for 34 years,* although he celebrated her funeral Mass at the Regensburg Cathedral.

Goerg Ratzinger said that their sister’s death made the brothers’ relationship even more profound. One may presume that Joseph Ratzinger this time did not wish to experience something similar as with Maria when he decided to fly to his brother’s bedside as soon as he got the news that he was seriously ill.

The desire to be with the person whom he had said was “always a point of orientation and reference for me” made him defy the challenges of his own poor health, an airplane ride which his doctors warned against, and the Covid-19 risk for persons his age, to travel to Regensburg, once he had obtained the consent of Pope Francis.

On the other hand, far from the unpleasant nicknames tagged on him by his detractors in the media since the 1980s, Joseph Ratzinger has shown himself to be a free spirit who has always felt what he called ‘a congenital wilfullness’.

It is a trait shared by his older brother who despite his age and difficulty in moving about, had refused to reside in Rome after his brother’s election as Pope because “the rent is high and it is difficult to find a good apartment”, hoping instead that his brother could come to visit him in Bavaria. And Joseph, whioeven when he was already the powerful CDF Prefect, would sometimes introduce himself as “the younger brother of the famous choirmaster of Regensburg”, has finally done that.

* [Beatrice at benoit-et-moi.fr/2020 corrects this by citing a recollection made by Cardinal Ratzinger himself about this in 1995 - saying that the day he stayed behind in Rome, he decided to visit the Paesetta della Madonna, a village near Rome's Fiumicino airport, which a cardinal friend had urged him to visit for its peaceful recuperative atmosphere.

"I must say that it was a providential intervention because on that day, in a completely unexpected way, my sister would die - and it was thanks to the help of the religious in the village, so near the airport, that I was able to see my sister for a few hours before she died. And that is why I will always keep in my heart a great remembrance of my visit to that village".]