AP Features, April 16th, 2007
The house where Pope Benedict XVI was born in religious rural Bavaria is open to the public.
The house opened Sunday, a day before the pontiff's 80th birthday.
At the pope's urging, the foundation that owns the home did not try to restore the structure to the state it was in 80 years ago. Instead, exhibits recount Joseph Ratzinger's life and teachings and stress the importance of his close family and the roles played by his parents, Josef and Maria Ratzinger.
"This house should not be a museum, but a spiritual challenge, a place of meeting with things that are important to us as well," said Bishop Wilhelm Schraml.
Most important, Schraml said, was to understand "how important the deeply religious family life was for young Joseph Ratzinger." The future pope had parents "who pray, who bring their children together with the faith and the church," Schraml said.
The pope's father, a police officer, moved the family to Traunstein when Joseph was 2, and Benedict has said he has no memories of Marktl.
The three-story white house where Benedict was born on April 16, 1927, the Saturday before Easter, stands in the center of the small town on the Inn River on the border with Austria.
The first floor of the house is devoted to the events of Benedict's life and to the Marktl region, with the pope's birth certificate and baptismal register. Upstairs, exhibits focus on his work as a theological adviser at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, and on his achievements as pope.
