On May 28, 1977, 50 year old Joseph Ratzinger was ordained Archbishop of Munich and Freising. One month later, Pope Paul VI made him a cardinal. A new stage in his ministry that would last the rest of his life.
In 1978, Paul VI passed away and the new Cardinal Ratzinger traveled to Rome to participate in the Conclave. John Paul the First was elected the Supreme Pontiff.
But thirty-three days later, the Pope died… and Cardinals returned to Rome.
The assembly of cardinals surprised the world with a non-Italian Pope: Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow. On October 16, 1978, the Church and the entire world welcomed a Polish Pope: John Paul II.
But the esteem and respect between the Archbishop of Krakow and the Archbishop of Munich and Freising had begun to grow much earlier. Since the Second Vatican Council both had heard of the other and they met thanks to their respective writings and publications. Between them, there was already a reciprocal admiration both at the intellectual and the theological levels.
And it’s precisely thanks to this esteem that Pope John Paul II wished to have him at his side in Rome. After different unsuccessful proposals from Rome, in 1981, the Polish Pope appointed Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger “Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” and president of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and the International Theological Commission.
At that point, the Bavarian cardinal officially renounced his leadership of the Diocese of Munich and Freising and moved definitively to Rome. From this moment, a deep friendship started between t Ratzinger and John Paul Ii.
For the next 24 years as Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger worked tirelessly on the elaboration and distribution of doctrinal documents. In 1986, John Paul II appointed him president of the commission that would be tasked with the writing of the Catechism of the Universal Church and in 2002 he was named Dean of the Cardinals’ College.
In 2000, the Congregation published the third part of the Message of Fatima along with a theological commentary redacted by the prefect himself.
And in 2005, just days before the death of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the meditations that accompanied the Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum, within which “the guardian of doctrine” denounced the sins of the Church before the entire world, inviting repentance and penance.
On April 2, 2005, the earthly world lost John Paul II . During a Funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Square, Cardinal Ratzinger, Dean of the Cardinals’ College, remembered his beloved predecessor with emotion:
