East German police spied on Pope

The East German secret police spied on the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI, for 15 years, targetting him as one of the Vatican’s...

The East German secret police spied on the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI, for 15 years, targetting him as one of the Vatican’s fiercest opponents of Communism, according to a report published today.

From April 1974 until the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, the feared Ministry for State Security kept a close tab on the then theology Professor Joseph Ratzinger, according to documents from the so-called Stasi Archives printed in the weekly Bild Am Sonntag.

‘‘Ratzinger is seen at the Vatican as one of the staunchest opponents of Communism,’’ a Stasi spy noted in his file after the late John Paul II named Ratzinger Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981.

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The report said the Stasi also attempted in vain to unearth damaging documents from Ratzinger’s involvement in the Hitler Youth under the Third Reich.

An ‘‘unofficial collaborator’’ for the regime using the alias ‘Birke’ (birch) reported on lectures that Ratzinger gave at a seminary in the eastern city of Erfurt, and recognised his importance to the Roman Catholic Church.

‘‘Ratzinger is currently, after the Pope and Secretary of State (Agostino) Casaroli, the most influential political and leading ideologue at the Vatican,’’ a Stasi spy wrote in the 1980s.

At least eight Stasi spies tracked Ratzinger over the years, although only two have been identified. The Bild Am Sonntag said the Pope had personally approved the release of his Stasi file. Ratzinger was born in the southern German town of Marktl Am Inn in 1927.