Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI returned to the Vatican on Monday afternoon after a four-day visit to Regensburg in his native Germany, where he saw his ailing older brother Georg. The Pope Emeritus is 93 and Georg 96. It was Benedict’s first trip outside Italy in more than seven years.
The two Ratzinger brothers jointly celebrated Mass on the feast of the Sacred Heart on 19 June and afterwards – their time together combined prayer, family reminiscence and nostalgic enjoyment of Bavarian treats – they each had a piece of Apfelstrudel.
On 20 June, the third day of the visit, the German nuncio, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, visited Benedict in the seminary where he was staying. They are old acquaintances: Eterovic was responsible for organising bishops’ synods during Benedict’s pontificate.
Between two visits to his brother Georg that same day, Benedict visited his parents’ and sister’s grave at the Ziegetsdorf graveyard accompanied by his small entourage and by Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg. There they prayed an Our Father and a Hail Mary and sprinkled a few drops of Holy Water over the grave. The two brothers had the family grave moved especially from Traunstein to the Ziegetsdorf graveyard so that the Ratzinger family could be together in Regensburg.
From the graveyard, they drove to the suburb of Pentling where in 1969, when he became professor of dogmatics at the University of Regensburg, Joseph Ratzinger had a house built where he lived until he was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising in 1977. He loved this house, which he called his “Häusle” – a diminutive form of the word house in Suabian – denoting a “little” or “wee” house – and used it as a holiday house when he was in Munich and later in Rome. Originally, the Ratzinger brothers planned to spend the last years of their lives in the “Häusle” but when he was elected Pope it became clear that Benedict would not return to Regensburg. He kept the house for another five years but then gave it to the Benedict XVI Institute where his theological heritage is now housed.
The Pope Emeritus spent three-quarters of an hour in the “Häusle”. For a few minutes he contemplated the oldest photo of his family and then had himself carried upstairs to his former study on the first floor. His neighbours, Rupert and Therese Hofbauer, with whom he was and still is very close, came over for a short visit.
“He speaks in a low, almost whispering voice, and he visibly has trouble articulating. But his thoughts are fully clear; his memory and his powers of deduction are phenomenal,” Voderholzer said after Benedict left. He noted that for nearly every aspect of his life, Benedict must rely on the help of others, but he praised him for allowing his frailty to be seen. “It takes a lot of courage, but also humility to put yourself in the hands of other people, and also to show up in public,” he said.