Pope Benedict XVI: His Journey to the Papacy

The Boy Who Would Be Pope

Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born in this house in Marktl am Inn, Bavaria, Germany, on April 16, 1927. He was baptized the same day he was born, Holy Saturday. "That my life from the beginning was in this way immersed in the Easter mystery has always filled me with gratitude," he wrote in his autobiography.