After a long career as a professor of theology at several German universities, he was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising and created a cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1977, an unusual promotion for someone with little pastoral experience.

Benedict's handling of sexual abuse cases within the Catholic Church and opposition to usage of condoms in areas of high HIV transmission was substantially criticised by public health officials, anti-AIDS activists, and victim's rights organizations.

In particular, Dominus Iesus, published by the congregation in the jubilee year 2000, reaffirmed many recently "unpopular" ideas, including the Catholic Church's position that "salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."

[62] Ratzinger's 2001 letter De delictis gravioribus clarified the confidentiality of internal church investigations, as defined in the 1962 document Crimen sollicitationis, into accusations made against priests of certain crimes, including sexual abuse.

[66] On 12 March 1983, Ratzinger, as prefect, notified the lay faithful and the clergy that Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục had incurred excommunication latae sententiae for illicit episcopal consecrations without the apostolic mandate.

[76] At the balcony, Benedict's first words to the crowd, given in Italian before he gave the traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing in Latin, were: Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the Cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble labourer in the vineyard of the Lord.

Benedict continued the tradition of his predecessor John Paul II and baptised several infants in the Sistine Chapel at the beginning of each year, on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, in his pastoral role as Bishop of Rome.

[98] In December 2011, the Pope formally recognized the validity of the miracles necessary to proceed with the canonizations of Kateri Tekakwitha, who would be the first Native American saint; Marianne Cope, a nun working with lepers in what is now the state of Hawaii; Giovanni Battista Piamarta, an Italian priest; Jacques Berthieu, a French Jesuit priest and African martyr; Carmen Salles y Barangueras, a Spanish nun and founder of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception; Peter Calungsod, a lay catechist and martyr from the Philippines; and Anna Schäffer, whose desire to be a missionary was unfulfilled on account of her illness.

"[117] In the discussion with secularism and rationalism, one of Benedict's basic ideas can be found in his address on the "Crisis of Culture" in the West, a day before Pope John Paul II died, when he referred to Christianity as the "religion of the Logos" (the Greek for "word", "reason", "meaning", or "intelligence").

"[130] Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, the president of the Pontifical Commission established to facilitate full ecclesial communion of those associated with that Society,[133] stated that the decree "opened the door for their return".

[129] In July 2021, Pope Francis issued the apostolic letter titled Traditionis custodes, which substantially reversed the decision of Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificum and imposed new and broad restrictions on the use of the Traditional Latin Mass.

[134][135] Near the end of June 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a document approved by Benedict XVI "because some contemporary theological interpretations of Vatican II's ecumenical intent had been 'erroneous or ambiguous' and had prompted confusion and doubt."

[158][159] Muslims were particularly offended by a passage that the Pope quoted in his speech: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

"[159] The passage originally appeared in the Dialogue Held with a Certain Persian, the Worthy Mouterizes, in Anakara of Galatia[160] written in 1391 as an expression of the views of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, one of the last Christian rulers before the Fall of Constantinople to the Muslim Ottoman Empire, on such issues as forced conversion, holy war, and the relationship between faith and reason.

"[167] Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez demanded an apology, and an indigenous organization in Ecuador issued a response which stated that "representatives of the Catholic Church of those times, with honourable exceptions, were accomplices, deceivers and beneficiaries of one of the most horrific genocides of all humanity.

[168] While visiting the United States on 17 April 2008, Benedict met with International Society for Krishna Consciousness representative Radhika Ramana Dasa,[169] a noted Hindu scholar[170] and disciple of Hanumatpreshaka Swami.

In September, Benedict undertook a three-day visit to Austria,[178] during which he joined Vienna's chief rabbi, Paul Chaim Eisenberg, in a memorial to the 65,000 Viennese Jews who perished in Nazi death camps.

[187][188] On 13 September 2008, at an outdoor Paris Mass attended by 250,000 people, Benedict condemned the modern materialism – the world's love of power, possessions, and money as a modern-day plague, comparing it to paganism.

On Thursday, 24 December 2009, while Benedict was proceeding to the altar to celebrate Christmas Eve Mass at St. Peter's Basilica, a woman later identified as 25-year-old Susanna Maiolo, who holds Italian and Swiss citizenship, jumped the barrier and grabbed the Pope by his vestments and pulled him to the ground.

[204][205][206] The Pope then promised to introduce measures that would "safeguard young people in the future" and "bring to justice" priests who were responsible for abuse and the next month the Vatican issued guidelines on how existing church law should be implemented.

In January 2022, a report written by German law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl and commissioned by the Catholic Church concluded that Cardinal Ratzinger failed to adequately take action against clerics in four cases of alleged abuse while he was Archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982.

[196] On 1 May 2010, the Vatican issued a statement denouncing "the most serious and objectively immoral behaviour of Father Maciel, confirmed by incontrovertible witnesses, which amount to true crimes and show a life deprived of scruples and authentic religious feeling.

"[217] In November 2020, the Vatican published a report blaming Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI for allowing defrocked former cardinal Theodore McCarrick to rise in power despite the fact that they both knew of sex abuse allegations against him.

[223] Anne Barrett Doyle, a co-director of BishopAccountability.org, an advocacy and research group, said that Benedict would be "remembered chiefly for his failure to achieve what should have been his job one: to rectify the incalculable harm done to the hundreds of thousands of children sexually abused by Catholic priests.

[254] Benedict wrote the text of a speech, delivered by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, on the occasion of the dedication of the Aula Magna at the Pontifical Urbaniana University to the pope emeritus, "a gesture of gratitude for what he has done for the Church as a conciliar expert, with his teaching as professor, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and, finally, the Magisterium."

[286][287] Benedict died on 31 December 2022 at 9:34 am Central European Time at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery at the age of 95, due to cardiogenic shock, resulting from respiratory failure that evolved from a parenchymal insufficiency.

[316] In an address to a conference of the Diocese of Rome held at the basilica of St. John Lateran 6 June 2005, Benedict remarked on the issues of same-sex marriage and abortion:[320] The various forms of the dissolution of matrimony today, like free unions, trial marriages and going up to pseudo-matrimonies by people of the same sex, are rather expressions of an anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom of man ... from here it becomes all the more clear how contrary it is to human love, to the profound vocation of man and woman, to systematically close their union to the gift of life, and even worse to suppress or tamper with the life that is born.During a 2012 Christmas speech,[321] Benedict made remarks about the present-day interpretation of the notion of gender.

Although he did not mention the topic, his words were interpreted by news media as denunciations of same-sex marriage,[322] with some outlets adding that Benedict would have called it a threat to world peace similar to abortion and euthanasia.

"[338] In July 2009, Benedict published his third encyclical, Caritas in veritate[339] (Charity in truth), setting out the philosophical and moral foundations for human development, individually and collectively, in striving for the common good.

[360] At his death, prior criticism of Benedict XVI received renewed attention, particularly that from public health officials, anti-AIDS activists, and victim's rights organizations over his handling of sexual abuse cases within the Catholic Church and position on usage of condoms in areas of high HIV transmission.