This week Pope Benedict XVI will celebrate his 82nd birthday and the fourth anniversary of his pontificate. Joseph Ratzinger was born in Germany on a Holy Saturday in 1927. As a child he would witness firsthand how the oppressions of the Nazi regime plagued his country and the Catholic Church. Shortly after the end of World War II, Ratzinger finished his studies in philosophy and theology in Freising, where he would later teach, and also at the University of Munich. He spent most of the ...