Pope Recalls Seminary Days After War: Christ is Stronger than Tyranny

'We knew that Christ was stronger than tyranny, than the power of Nazi ideology and its mechanisms of oppression.
We knew that time and the future belong to Christ, and we knew that he had called us.'

VATICAN CITY (Zenit.org) - When young Joseph Ratzinger was able to return to the seminary after the war, he felt free and happy -- able to follow God's call and now a witness that Christ was stronger than Nazi ideology.

Benedict XVI recounted these sentiments as he recalled Saturday his seminary days in Freising. The Pope was being made an honorary citizen of the south German town at a ceremony at the Vatican.

The Holy Father recalled the bond that unites him to this city that forms part of the archdiocese he headed from 1977 to 1982 (before being called to Rome to lead the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.)

His link to the city is highlighted by the fact that he chose to include in his episcopal coat of arms and, later, the papal one, the Moor of Freising and St. Corbinian's bear.

In his improvised address, the Pope mentioned when the seminary of Freising reopened its doors to the group of aspirants to the priesthood.

Part of the facilities had been turned into a military hospital for foreign prisoners of war awaiting repatriation. But the Pontiff recalled that despite the lack of space, there was an atmosphere of euphoria.

"We were in dormitories, in classrooms, etc., but we were happy, not only because the miseries and threats of war and the Nazi power had gone, but also because we were free, and above all because we were on the path to which we felt we were called," he said. "We knew that Christ was stronger than tyranny, than the power of Nazi ideology and its mechanisms of oppression.

"We knew that time and the future belong to Christ, and we knew that he had called us and that he needed us, that he was in need of us.

"We knew that the people of those changing times were waiting for us; they were waiting for priests who would come with a new impulse of faith to build the living house of God."

You belong to me

The Holy Father continued recalling the years of philosophy and theology studies at the seminary, and his later post as professor of dogmatic and fundamental theology.

Professors "were not only scholars but also teachers, persons who not only offered the fruits of their specialization, but persons who were interested in giving students the essential, the salutary bread they needed to receive the faith from within," he said.

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Benedict XVI also recalled the day of his priestly ordination together with his brother Georg, in the Cathedral of Freising on June 29, 1951. He spoke of the sensations he felt prostrated on the floor before the altar, during the invocation of the saints with the singing of the litanies.

"When you are there, prostrate," he said, "you are conscious once again of your misery and you wonder: But will I really be capable of all this?"

After the imposition of hands by the then elderly Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, the Pope said he felt "the consciousness that it is the Lord who places his hands on me and says to me: You belong to me, you do not belong only to yourself. I love you, put yourself at my service. But also the awareness that this imposition of hands is a grace, which not only creates obligations but which, above all, is a gift; that he is with me and that his love protects and accompanies me."

Finally, the Holy Father reflected on the three and a half years he spent with his parents in the apartment located in Lerchenfeldhof, which "made me feel Freising is truly 'my home.'"

The Pope also recalled the city's towers that rise in Dombert, the hill on which the cathedral is built, and which "indicate the true height, God's, from which comes the love that makes us persons, which gives us the true 'human being.'"