.jpg){kind=link}
What does a 1920 newspaper ad have to do with one of the greatest popes of our times? Pretty much everything.
This April 16 would have been the 99th birthday of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI — born Joseph Alois Ratzinger in 1927 in Marktl am Inn, Bavaria, on Holy Saturday, the first baby baptized in the Easter water blessed that night.
It’s the perfect moment to remember not just the man, but the almost unbelievable story of how he came to exist at all.
A Pope Born from a Classified Ad
Here’s a fact you probably never heard: Pope Benedict XVI’s parents met through a personal ad in a Catholic newspaper. And Benedict himself didn’t even find out about it until 2006.
A researcher digging through the Bavarian state archives discovered a tiny ad in a local Catholic weekly called Liebfraubote from July 1920. It was placed by Joseph Ratzinger Sr., a police officer and civil servant. Here’s what it said:
“Middle-ranking civil servant, single, Catholic, 43, immaculate past, from the country, is looking for a good Catholic, pure girl who can cook well, tackle all household chores, with a talent for sewing and homemaking with a view to marriage as soon as possible. Fortune desirable but not a precondition.”
A 36-year-old baker’s daughter and trained cook named Maria Peintner answered the ad. Just four months later, they were married.
It’s worth noticing where Joseph Sr. chose to look for a wife: in a Catholic newspaper. Not a secular bulletin. Not a random agency. He deliberately sought a Catholic woman through a Catholic publication, putting shared faith above everything else.
Maria Peintner responded. She was a baker’s daughter, a trained cook, and a devout Catholic. In just a few months, they were husband and wife.
They had three children. Benedict XVI was the youngest of three siblings, and all three lived lives marked by faith.
His older sister, Maria Ratzinger (1921–1991), was a Third Order Franciscan who never married and dedicated her life to caring for her brother and the cardinal’s household.
His brother, Georg (1924–2020), was a renowned priest and musician; he was ordained a priest on the same day as Joseph, June 29, 1951. Georg died on July 1, 2020, at the age of 96, leaving Benedict as the last surviving member of his family.
The youngest of the Ratzingers became one of the greatest theologians, guided the universal Church after the giant Saint John Paul II, and left a legacy that believers are still discovering and valuing today.
When this discovery was shared with Pope Benedict XVI and his brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, both were reportedly shocked — they had never heard the story before.
The researcher had found the ad while working on a story for a German newspaper, and the whole thing went international in September 2006.
Pope Benedict XVI died on Dec. 31, 2022, at age 95, after a long life of service to the Church and almost 10 years after his resignation.
From a simple classified ad in a Bavarian Catholic weekly to the Chair of Peter, his story is a powerful reminder that God’s providence often moves through the most ordinary — and even amusing — details.