My Brother, the Pope

by Georg Ratzinger

  In our family, though, it was not only Christmas that was marked by the deep faith of our parents and the religious customs of our homeland. From our parents we learned what it means to have a firm grasp of faith in God. Every day we prayed together, and in fact before and after each meal (we ate our breakfast, dinner, and supper together). The main prayer time was after the midday dinner, when the particular concerns of the family were expressed. Part of it was the prayer to Saint Dismas, the “good thief”, a former criminal who was crucified together with Jesus on Mount Calvary, repented on the cross, and begged the Lord for mercy. We prayed to him, the patron of repentant thieves, to protect Father from professional troubles.

  Being a policeman, after all, was a rather dangerous profession, and we were often very anxious about Father. Especially when he worked the night shift and had to walk the beat. When a misdemeanor or a crime had occurred in the area he patrolled, it was his duty to investigate it. Father often worked at night, and then it could happen that he was held up, for whatever reasons, and came home later. Then, naturally, we children and Mother were anxious and prayed that nothing had happened to him. So, of course, our prayer life was always marked by concern about Father. When we were children, our parents also put us to bed and prayed our evening prayers with us. They used a very special form of blessing and repeated it three times. Unfortunately I do not remember the wording today. This was followed by another somewhat expansive blessing. Once I asked my father what it meant, but all he said to me was, “I do not know exactly, either. My father and mother used to pray this prayer at my bedside.”

  I must admit we seldom went to Mass together, simply because our father had to work on Sunday or else sang in the church choir. When we were somewhat older, I and then later my brother served at the altar usually on Sundays and during the week, while Mother and our sister went to another Mass. Often on Sundays we attended Mass twice, once as servers and another time with our family, for instance, the early Mass at 6:00 and the main parish Mass at 8:00 or 8:30. Then, in the afternoon at 2:00, there were devotions, and on feast days a Vespers service.

  This piety, which was lived and put into practice, defined our whole life, even though today I celebrate only one Mass and refrain from going to a second one. Nevertheless, it was imparted to us as children in the cradle, so to speak, and we remained faithful to it throughout our lives.

  I am convinced that the lack of this traditional piety in many families is also a reason why there are too few priestly vocations today. Many people in our time practice a form of atheism rather than the Christian faith. In some respects, they may maintain a sort of vestigial religiosity; perhaps they still go to Mass on the major feast days, but this rudimentary faith long ago ceased to permeate their lives, and it has no bearing on their everyday routine. It starts with sitting down at table and beginning a meal without even thinking about prayer, and it ends with no longer coming to church regularly on Sundays. Thus, an almost pagan way of life has taken root. If there are no religious practices even in family life, then this has an effect on all the rest of human life. I often speak with brother priests, and in almost all cases it seems that they prayed regularly as a family and went to Mass together. This then shaped their whole lives and directed them toward God. Thus, their vocation fell on fertile soil.

  In America there is a saying, “The family that prays together, stays together.” In our time, when divorces are the order of the day, there are more and more broken marriages and single parents. Could this be because fewer and fewer families are willing to entrust their problems to God? Are families ruined also by a lack of faith and prayer? Do marriages fail because they leave no room for God?

  I certainly think so. If you leave everything at the human level, then the decisive dimension where problems can be resolved is missing.

  How did the Ratzinger family deal with marital and family quarrels?

  We did not experience that, since each one settled that himself and with God in personal prayer. We did not talk about such things. There are problems in every family, and there were quite definitely in ours, too, but such problems became a part of our prayer. The personal concerns of each one of us were incorporated into that, and then we also surely found the solution there.

  The story goes that the late Archbishop of Fulda, Johannes Dyba (1929-2000), came from a very temperamental family in which the members sometimes dealt with each other forcefully. Yet after they went to confession, a very special peace returned to that family, and a special, conciliatory mood suddenly prevailed. Today, unfortunately, confession is much too often neglected, although it is, after all, the most generous offer of grace that God can possibly make us. We used to go to confession every month. When I was at the seminary in Traunstein, a Jesuit recommended that we should even confess once a week. I must honestly admit that we never did that consistently, but monthly confession is certainly right and necessary for everyone.

  The course of the whole year was defined for us by the church holidays. In this regard, I should mention Easter in first place, naturally, even before Christmas. Throughout Lent there were “Mount of Olives” devotions, which in the city took place on Thursday, the day when Christ had prayed so desperately in the Garden of Gethsemane, but in the countryside were held on Sundays for practical reasons. They consisted of a rather long Lenten sermon and the devotion itself, which recalled the three falls of Christ: in Gethsemane, Jesus eventually fell to the ground three times, and so the Mount of Olives devotion was made up of three sections. First, the church choir sang. Usually a man sang a solo, and then there was a hymn and, finally, the prayer recited by the pastor, followed by a period of silence. In the midst of that silence, the large church bell then rang, which lent an especially impressive tone to the whole thing. In Dorfen, where I served for four years as an assistant pastor (from 1953 to 1957), there was a Baroque Mount of Olives. Christ was depicted as praying on it. During the devotion, the sacristan then used a crank to lower from the ceiling an angel that was hanging on a rope, with a chalice in his hand, so as to strengthen Jesus for his future suffering and death. Back then, in the Baroque period, as we know, they liked to stage things graphically like that. But sometimes it happened that the crank did not work, and the angel literally plummeted from heaven. But in spite of that, these Mount of Olives devotions were always a beautiful and moving way to celebrate Lent.

  The Easter Vigil ceremony, as I already mentioned, took place on the morning of Holy Saturday, together with the blessing of the baptismal water and the lighting of the Paschal candle. The celebration of the Resurrection followed that afternoon, another Baroque form of piety. At that time, in many churches, including the ones in Tittmoning and Aschau, there was a “Holy Sepulcher”, in other words, an altar that was set up as Christ’s tomb. On it the Most Blessed Sacrament was exposed, over which a white, transparent veil was placed. Beneath the altar, there was a statue of Christ lying in the tomb, adorned with flowers. Colorful, spherical glass containers filled with red, yellow, and green liquid served as special decorations. Thus the Holy Sepulcher offered a marvelous spectacle.

  For the celebration of the Resurrection, the church was darkened; all the church windows were draped with black cloth. Then the pastor, in festive vestments and a cope, sang “Christ is risen” three times, to which the choir responded, the third time, “Alleluia!” Actually the priests are supposed to sing each time in a higher key, but most pastors could not distinguish the keys, since they were not that musical, either. Someone stood at each window to let the drapes fall as soon as the pastor intoned the third “Christ is risen.” In Aschau, my brother and I did that, too, for a time. Then the spring sunshine poured into the church and created a Paschal mood. Finally, another procession took place, during which the church choir sang an Easter motet, for instance, in Traunstein, the “Attolite Portas” by Caspar Ett (1788-1847), a composer from Munich who worked at Saint Michael’s. This procession with the Most Blessed Sacrament under the “heaven”, as we calle
d the baldachin, with lots of incense, was always a very festive occasion, which contributed to bringing the good news of the Resurrection deep into the hearts of the believers.

  Besides that, there were other popular customs at Easter. There was the blessing of the foods that all the families brought with them, smoked meat or bacon, for example, salt and a few eggs; of course, decorating Easter eggs was also part of Easter. Mother and the ladies usually colored the Easter eggs with onion skin, which made them brown; that was the least expensive way of doing it. But there were also dyes at the grocery store that you could buy, so as to have very colorful Easter eggs. These were brought to be blessed, and of course the Osterfladen, a sort of braided yeast bread with a special glaze. Then we ate it after the ceremony. In addition, Mother always baked us a “Paschal Lamb” that was served to us for breakfast.

  I have fond memories also of the May devotions that took place usually every day during the month of Mary. We always liked to go to them because the church was so festively decorated, with many flowers that enhanced the sanctuary not only visually but also with their beautiful fragrances. Then the church choir or a group of children sang.

  In general, the Mother of God was always with us in our house. In our kitchen, for instance, a picture of Christ hung to the left of the crucifix and, on the other side, a picture of Mary. The Rosary, too, as I already mentioned, was prayed almost every day in our home. Only in the month of the Holy Rosary, October, did we go to pray the Rosary in church.

  In those days, a special place in the church calendar was held by the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was celebrated on February 2. Today, it is more a feast of our Lord, since it recalls the first visit of Jesus to his Father’s house, his Presentation in the Temple. But back then, it was mainly a Marian feast. On that day, the family always prayed the Rosary with a special emphasis. Each one had a long, thin candle that he placed on the chair in front of him; we would light them and let them burn down during the recitation of the Rosary. In those days, people thought that the family member whose candle was extinguished first would also die first, but that of course was only a superstition.

  Then there were the tapers; I still have a few today. The women often had a taper beside them in church, which they allowed to burn down during Mass. There were plain tapers but also those that were richly decorated. They played a very special role on the farms, where at that time there were still farmhands and maidservants. The maidservants had to take care of the farmhands: they made their beds and darned their socks, and so on, and as a token of thanks a farmhand used to give to the maid who had served him a taper on the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin.

  February 2 was also the so-called schlankeltag (from the Bavarian dialect word schlankeln = to move house), on which the hired help changed their place of residence. Whenever someone wanted to go somewhere else, the contract of employment always ended on the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. That was the day when the domestic servants left their former employer and started a new job. So it was customary, here in Bavaria at least, for the farmer to ask the farmhands and maidservants ahead of time whether they wanted to stay on, and, if they were willing to do so, they received five marks on that day. In any case, it was an important day on the farmer’s calendar and also a holiday on which there was no work. It always ended with a solemn Rosary in the evening with the wax candles.

  Of course, we always celebrated our name days in a special way: Maria (September 12), Joseph (March 19), and Georg (April 23). On those occasions, there was always a particular tablecloth belonging to Mother, which I still have today. Every year on my name day, Frau Agnes Heindl, my housekeeper, brings it out again, the name-day tablecloth from back home. Early in the morning, a bit of pure coffee and a pie baked by Mother were served. Father also bought a bottle of wine to celebrate the day. Particularly in Aschau, when we were already somewhat older, there were always two sorts of wine, either “Malaga” or “Samos”. Then we children, too, got a tiny little glass of “Malaga” or “Samos” wine. Naturally on those days there was a festive meal, and we got presents, too. Birthdays, on the other hand, were not especially celebrated in our house; we only expressed congratulations.

  But now I have got far ahead of myself. Before we came to Aschau in 1932, we moved first in 1929 from Marktl to Tittmoning, a small town that at the time particularly fascinated us. We perceived Tittmoning, at any rate, as being very urban as opposed to Marktl, which had a more rural character. It is a pretty little provincial town, dominated by a large town square in the southern style, around which small shops were crowded. It was to be our home for the next three years.

  III

  Tittmoning

  (1929-1932)

  The family’s next stop, Tittmoning, is located on the Salzach, the river that forms the border between Bavaria and Austria. In his book Milestones, Joseph Ratzinger describes the provincial town as his “childhood’s land of dreams” (M 10). He was impressed by the great town square with its elegant fountain, the town hall with its magnificent façade resplendent with portraits of Roman emperors in its niches, the huge old houses of the townsmen, the medieval city gates, and the defiant castle from the twelfth century, which sits enthroned on a height over the town and has served the bishops of Salzburg since the seventeenth century as their (seldom used) summer residence. He was impressed also, however, by its rich ecclesial history. Here the seventeenth-century mystic Bartholomäus Holzhauser not only recorded his visions about the end of the world, but also founded a charitable institution, a residential association for secular priests. Since then the pastor has been called the “Dean” of the foundation, the assistants were “canons”, and the rectory was enthroned like a pretty little castle at the highest point of the town.

  The police force and, therefore, the Ratzingers were accommodated in one of the most beautiful houses of the historical town, the so-called Stubenrauchhaus. It was located right on the town square and once belonged to a charitable institution. Today a plaque at Wägnergasse 3 recalls the famous family’s stay, whereas the building now houses the local bank. Its impressive facade with the beautiful bay window at least temporarily caused the family to overlook the fact that their domicile was in rather poor condition. But that did not matter to the children. They found all that exciting and mysterious and felt as though they were in an old knight’s castle.

  Tittmoning had a thoroughly Salzburgian character. After all, it was once an establishment of the bishops of Salzburg and to a great extent owed its former wealth to the earlier salt trade. The house in which we lived once belonged to the cathedral chapter of Salzburg. There we had a very large room that once served as the chapter meeting hall. This apartment, however, was rather impractical. The stone floor was full of cracks; the creaking wooden stairs were steep and inconvenient. Even the heating proved to be quite troublesome, since the fuel for the wood and coal stove had to be brought up by that narrow, steep stairway. It soon became too much of a strain for our mother to be constantly carrying heavy wicker baskets up the stairs, and so one day she ordered from the basket weaver a tragekraxn, a hamper with straps that you could carry on your back. In the summer, fortunately, there was no need to heat, and so she just had to transport the firewood for the cooking stove, but in the winter, fetching wood became real drudgery. Downstairs in the house there was a shop where utensils, horseshoes, nails, and all sorts of things were sold. The landlord was a certain Herr Stubenrauch; he was a peculiar man. He was probably hard of hearing; at any rate, you always had to speak very loudly until he understood something. He had a maid who now and then came to Father in tears to report the landlord. Then our father had to call him to order in due season. Later on, I again met this maid, whose name was Rosa; she worked at first as a maid at the seminary in Traunstein. During the war, she again crossed paths with me. I was serving at that time in various parishes around Traunstein as an assistant organist, and she had meanwhile been employed as the housek
eeper of a pastor in the vicinity of Traunstein.

  Tittmoning had a night watchman; I was afraid of him at first. We were unacquainted with that in Marktl. So we were awakened at night, my brother and I, because he sang so loudly:

  Hört ihr Leut’ und lasst euch sagen,

  Uns’re Uhr hat zwölf geschlagen.

  (Hear ye, people, what I tell:

  Our town clock has now struck twelve.)

  Then I said to my parents, since we were all sleeping in the one big room, “There is a wicked man outside shouting; what is the matter?” Then my parents had to calm me first and explain that he was the night watchman, who sees to it that nothing happens.

  The siblings Maria, Joseph, and Georg Ratzinger

  Generally it was a very romantic little town. When I think of Tittmoning, the first thing that occurs to me is a very beautiful collegiate church that had a considerable fascination for us even as children. In it the faithful revere an image of the suffering Christ that is painted in such a way that you have the impression the eyes are following you. Then there was the convent chapel, which was also the school chapel, in which Masses for the school were held. In the convent chapel there was a sodality that held solemn devotions with a procession every month. During this procession, there were always two boys who carried a stäbchen, a small pole with their spiritual emblem. Then I, too, became a staff-bearer and was very proud of it. For this purpose we received a white cowl with a leather strap as a belt, and then we boys were allowed to walk along in the monthly processions in the church. My mother always used to go to this devotion with my brother and sister just to see me in the procession.