BREAKING:Pope Benedict XVI, former head of the Roman Catholic Church, dies at 95
The man perceived as a strict enforcer of church teaching was somewhat uneasy about becoming pope, and soon after his election in 2005, then-cardinal Ratzinger told a group of German pilgrims he “started to feel quite dizzy” when he realized he might be chosen as the new pope. He began to pray.
The centrality of this relationship with Christ in Ratzinger’s thought goes back to his earliest days as a theologian. He wrote his 1953 dissertation about Saint Augustine, a bishop and theologian of the early church perhaps best known for his autobiography, The Confessions, an intimate account of his struggle with sin and his conversion to Christianity. Ratzinger later said that the The Confessions topped the list of the books he would take to a deserted island.
He also drew the ire of left-wing Catholics for investigating proponents of liberation theology, a controversial far-left school of thought centered primarily among some priests and theologians in Latin America. Conservatives praised him for opposing liberation theology, as well as reaffirming the church's teachings on human sexuality, including its opposition to contraception.
The primary factor explaining why the epidemic of abuse spread through society and the church, he argued, was the absence of God in Western society. A world without God could not have any real concept of truth, and therefore could not have any genuine moral system, and so previously unthinkable actions became permissible, Ratzinger claimed.
While Ratzinger's contributions to the church as a theologian and pope were monumental on their own, his shock resignation, the first by a pope in almost six centuries, only broadened his legacy.
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