Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vaat, the host and the senior publishing

director. We just learned that the great Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has passed away.

The 265th pontiff of the Catholic Church lived for almost a century. And so today on this special

bonus episode, I'm joined with Bishop Barron to discuss his life, his enduring impact, and his

key ideas and contributions. Bishop, it's kind of a somber day, but also a joyous one in a way,

isn't it? Yeah, I think so. Obviously, it's a sad day. He was a great man and one of the most

consequential players in the Church League of the last 100 years, I would say. But for people of

a spiritual vision, the Christian faith, it's a day of joy, as he finds the friendship with the

Lord that he always long for. So he had to say a sad day, as you say, somber, but at the same time,

we rejoice in his union with the Lord. Joseph Rattsinger, as he was known before

becoming Pope, was born in 1927. So this man lived almost a hundred years, the number of events

that he witnessed and was a part of both within the Church and in the wider world is enormous.

We could spend hours talking about his whole biography, but can you give us a basic arc

of the life of Rattsinger Benedict? I'll see if I can. There's so much to say, but just maybe

a few highlights. As you say, born 1927, and he's from the southern part of Germany from Bavaria,

which is a deeply Catholic culture, and he was formed very much by that. His father was a fierce

anti-Nazi and young Joseph comes of age during those Hitler years, and he's a teenager at the end

of the war, and for brief time is in the Hitler youth, but just the way that any young man was

drawn into that. At the very end of the war, he was actually involved in defending the Favio land,

but he's just a kid at the time. Joins' seminary becomes a priest and does pastoral work for

a very short time, but he's everyone new. He was destined for an academic career because his brilliance

in that field was evident early on. He's kind of a phenomenon in a way because as a very young man,

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