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REGENSBURG, Germany, April 16, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – On this 85th birthday of Joseph Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict XVI – LifeSiteNews interviewed Michael Hesemann, who worked with Msgr. Georg Ratzinger on the fascinating new book My Brother, the Pope.

Hesemann told LifeSiteNews how growing up in the Ratzinger household led Pope Benedict and his brother Georg to be able to stay true to the hard Catholic teachings of life and family despite their unpopularity.

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“In their youth, both experienced the power of a healthy, deeply religious family. They learned to appreciate family values even more when their family became a kind of fortress against the temptations and errors of their time, the Nazi ideology,” Hesemann told LifeSiteNews.com. “In this time, the model of a strong Catholic family – a family that stays together, prays together and supports each other – became a contrast to an evil ideology that tried everything to rip the families apart.”

The Ratzinger brothers, Hesemann explained, grew up in a situation where all around them the culture opposed what was taught by their faith and practiced in their family.

“During the Nazi dictatorship, children were told to denounce their parents at school in case they did not follow the Nazi ideology, listen to foreign radio stations, etc.,” said Hesemann.

“The Nazis tried everything to take control over the children at earliest time; that was the idea behind youth organizations like the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) for boys or the Bund deutscher Mädchen (Union of German girls). This system frankly horrified the Ratzinger family.”

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In addition, Hesemann noted, the Ratzinger family was personally confronted by the anti-life mentality. “Also, they were confronted with the Nazi euthanasia when a mentally handicapped cousin was forced into a Nazi institution where he was killed, as they later learned.”

The Ratzinger brothers believed, said Hesemann “in the dignity of human life because they experienced the horrors of a ‘culture of death’ at a rather early age.”

In My Brother the Pope, Msgr. Ratzinger provides Hesemann with the only living witness to the early days and formation of brothers who were ordained as Catholic priests together on the same day in 1951.

Asked from where both Ratzinger brothers came to the strength of faith needed to give themselves to the priesthood, Hesemann replied unhesitatingly, “From the deep faith of their parents!”  He added, “The religious life – the common daily prayer, when the whole family was kneeling down on the kitchen floor and prayed the rosary together; went to Church regularly; celebrated the feasts of the Church calendar.”

“When you ask today how it comes that a rather simple family, a small town policeman and a hotel cook, raised two boys who are both geniuses of their kind – Georg Ratzinger as a world famous choir leader and composer, Joseph Ratzinger as Germany’s greatest theologian and eventually successor of St. Peter,” said Hesemann. “The answer, the ‘Ratzinger family secret,’ is very simple: it was their Catholic faith that inspired them in all its beauty and depth.”

Is there any jealousy?  What does Georg feel about having his brother be the Pope?

Hesemann: “Well, there was a time when the theologian Joseph Ratzinger was just ‘the little brother of the famous choir leader.’ For Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, nothing has changed in his inner relationship to his brother since he became Pope; only that as Benedict XVI, he became less available and less free to travel.

He learned to arrange himself with the new situation; he got a second phone with a number only known to his brother, who calls him every other day, since Georg Ratzinger does not want to disturb his brother, the Pope, in his busy schedule. He visits him up to four times a year, each time for 8-10 days.

More information on the book is available here.