German Popes
Main category: German popesEight popes have been either German or from Germanic tribes. Pope Boniface II, an Ostrogoth, served as the first Germanic pope from 530 to 532. The next German pope was Gregory V (Pope 996-999). The 11th century saw five German popes, including Leo IX, who was canonised as a saint.
The last Pope Benedict XVI, former Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, is a German, from Bavaria. Recently, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her 9-page address at the Bavarian Catholic Academy's conference on "Political Action based on Christian Responsibility", noted that Benedict XVI's new encyclical Caritas in Veritate points to the way forward in the current economic crisis.
Read more about this topic: Roman Catholicism In Germany
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“That nameless and infinitely delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness which, in every refined and honorable attachment, is contemporary with the courtship, and precedes the final banns and the rite; but which, like the bouquet of the costliest German wines, too often evaporates upon pouring love out to drink, in the disenchanting glasses of the matrimonial days and nights.”
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