Great pics Palma, thanks for posting!

Re-posting systematically, I hope, the available pictures so far of Joseph Ratzinger's ordination
on June 29, 1951, and his First Mass (Primiz) on July 8, 1951. Both occasions were shared with
his brother Georg and their friend Rupert Berger, as well as some 40 other colleagues. [I edited
the earlier post, to leave only the seminarian/pre-ordination photos.]

Ordination Day in Freising:

The screen-caps from RAI's 80th birthday documentary provide invaluable photo documentation.
The ordaining bishop is Munich Archbishop Michael Faulhaber. It was seeing him in his cardinal robes
when he was just a 5-yer-old that made Joseph Ratzinger say "I want to be a cardinal when I grow up."








Papa and Mama Ratzinger at the Ordination rites.









The third man with the brothers is Rupert Berger.


Maklara contributed the next picture at the time we were doing stories about the Marktl birthday exhibit at the 'birth-house'. It's from one of the life-size panels used as room markers in the exhbibit.





Occasion? This one has Freising in the URL tag, but Ratzi is wearing a rocchetta
that's completely different from what he's wearing in the first picture.



'PRIMIZ' or First Mass in Traunstein:


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Family picture to commemorate the brothers' ordination.
I have since read elsewhere this was taken after their First Mass.

Left, St. Martin parish; right, Holy Blood parish.

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After helping out for four weeks in Munich in the parish of St. Martin/Moosach, Joseph Ratzinger spent one year as chaplain in the Holy Blood/Bogenhausen parish in Munich.

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As a young priest in Munich, probably taken 1951-1952:





For over two years, the picture below was
the only widely circulated picture of Joseph
Ratzinger as a young priest after his ordination.
It was used with practically all picture galleries
run with his biography in the days following
the Conclave of 2005. Original captions for
this picture said it was taken in 1951 in
a mountain village called Ruhpolding near Munich.
Recently, Palma posted the two larger pictures
obviously taken on the same occasion, but her
caption says "On August 17, 1952, the young
vicar Josef Ratzinger celebrated a mass in
the mountains with members of the Kolping family
of Traunstein at the top of the hill called
Unternberg."







In fact, Palma has this picture of a marker now at the Unternberg site, with the date of the Mass:

Click 2x to enlarge




This picture has 'Freising' in its URL, but
I can't tell if it was before or after
ordination.




11/8/07
Two days ago, Palma posted this picture in FOTO DEL GIOVANE RATZINGER
in the main forum. I traced it by its URL date to the website of the Parish of Kirchanschoering in Bavaria,
which posted it during Easter Week this year following a birthday greeting to the Pope.


The caption to the picture reads:
10.07.1955 Primiziant Franz Niedermayer und Primizprediger Dr. Joseph Ratzinger in Kirchanschöring.
(Am 27 März würde Franz Niedermayer 80 Jahre alt) -
7/10/55 First Mass celebrant Franz Niedermayer and homilist Dr. Joseph Ratzinger in Kirchanschoering.
(On March 27, Franz Niedermayer will turn 80.)
Kirchanschoering is one of the many towns in the district of Traunstein along the Austrian border.

I have tried to google Niedermayer and I keep getting something about a Franz Niedermayer who wrote
a contemporary book on the great Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset. As I have not been able
to find a corresponding biography, I do not know if it is the same Franz Niedermayer. If it was,
I would not be surprised, given the caliber of friends that Father Prof. Dr. Ratzinger had. They must
have been friends enough for him to have the young Ratzinger preach at his First Mass.

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From 1952 to 1954, while preparing for his doctorate in theology, he was already teaching at the minor seminary in Freising.

From 1954 to 1957 he held the chair for dogmatic and fundamental theology at the university there.

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PALMA has just found identification for one of the pictures posted in the PRE-ORDINATION section on the preceding page. I have replaced the original picture with this - it's the identical picture and size, except this one is captioned on the picture itself.



The caption:

1947 As 'Ministrant' (altar server) at the consecration of the new bells for the chapel of Buchfelln.