TERESA BENEDETTA
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Benefan suggested the felicitous name for this thread, which will be devoted to stories about Joseph Ratzinger the man, at any stage of his long and varied life, as well as his family and friends.
An equally felicitous first posting we owe to Ratzigirl, as usual, who found this short item from L'Adige, a newspaper in northern Italy (the region where Joseph's maternal grandmother comes from). It is a rare account of Joseph at University, told by one of his female classmates! Herewith a translation:
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A FEMALE CLASSMATE REMEMBERS JOSEPH
Hilda Brauer, who was at University with Joseph Ratzinger, remembers her classmate this way:
"He was extraordinarily tender-hearted. We were all fascinated by his behavior, so different from that of all the other boys who tried every way to lure us. He was very timid, and when we
met him in the corridors, he would greet us with a brief nod and very soft words. It was this timidity that made us girls curious and which placed him in a different light from all the rest.
"He was the most brilliant in our class, no one came close to
being his equal.(In class), all his timidity was transformed, revealing an estraordinarily active and agile mind.
"In addition, I must say he was always very nice. I remember very well when one day, my friends and I were in the park, discussing some theological subject. Then he came by, carrying
bunches of flowers which he had prepared for each of us -
a gesture which showed how much sensitivity he had beneath an apparently cold mask. It's a good thing there were only 3 of us
girls that day, otherwise he would have had to pick all the flowers in the park!"
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The park referred to is Fuerstenried, where in his memoirs, Ratzi says he used to take long walks, as he considered whether he was truly suitable to be a priest and whether he could fully commit himself to the priestly vocation, including, as it must, a life of celibacy.
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