Stasi said to have kept files on future Pontiff

November 23, 2011

Pope Benedict XVI was reportedly under observation for years by the notorious secret-police agency of East Germany, the Stasi. Attempts to reconstruct the shredded records of the Stasi have produced a report that a pastor in Munster—in what was then West Germany—was sending reports to the East German spy agency. Among the individuals covered in his reports was a young scholarly priest, Father Joseph Ratzinger.

 

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Further information:

• The researcher, the pope and the Stasi's friends in the west (Guardian)