Like many Popes before him, Pope Benedict XVI grew up in modest circumstances. His devout family life fostered a piety that never left him, while his intelligence combined with his faith led him to see deeply into the controversies of the 20th century and find God as the ultimate answer. Mariano Fazio brings to light the early influences on Joseph Ratzinger- his strongly Catholic upbringing, the surrounding confusion in pre-war, Nazi-dominated Germany, and his lifelong effort to explain and correct the intellectual errors that still plague the Catholic Church. Here we see a man whose combined faith and reason presents a clear insight and judgement of what was going wrong in the Catholic Church, and what was needed to restore it.
