Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger was born on 16 April, Holy Saturday, 1927, at Schulstraße 11, at 8:30 in the morning in his parents' home in Marktl, Bavaria, Germany.
He was baptised the same day. He was the third and youngest child of Joseph Ratzinger Sr., a police officer, and Maria Ratzinger
Benedict's elder brother, Georg Ratzinger, was a Catholic priest and was the former director of the Regensburger Domspatzen choir.
Ratzinger's family, especially his father, bitterly resented the Nazis, and his father's opposition to Nazism resulted in demotions and harassment of the family.
In his early twenties, Ratzinger was deeply influenced by the thought of Italian German Romano Guardini[42] who taught in Munich 1946 to 1951 when Ratzinger was studying in Freising and later at the University of Munich.
Ordained as a priest in 1951 in his native Bavaria, Ratzinger embarked on an academic career and established himself as a highly regarded theologian by the late 1950s.
On 11 February 2013, Benedict announced his resignation, citing a "lack of strength of mind and body" due to his advanced age.
He also knew Portuguese, Latin, Biblical Hebrew, and Biblical Greek. He was a member of several social science academies, such as the French Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques.
Dignitaries and religious leaders have been paying tribute to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who died Saturday in a monastery in the Vatican at the age of 95