On Saturday 13 November, the 2021 Ratzinger Prize was awarded to Professors Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz and Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger. The Ratzinger Prize was launched in 2011 in order to recognise scholars whose work demonstrated authentic and meaningful contributions to theology, much like Joseph Ratzinger himself had throughout his life.
Gerl-Falkovitz, 76, leads the European Institute of Philosophy and Religion at the Pope Benedict XVI Philosophical-Theological University in Austria. She is a specialist in the philosophy of Edith Stein – otherwise known as St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross – and Romano Guardini, the German-Italian thinker much revered in the twentieth century.
Schwienhorst-Schönberger, 64, is a professor at the University of Vienna and is recognised as one of the world’s leading Old Testament scholars, specialising in the Bible’s Wisdom literature.
Last year the award was given to Australian Professor Tracey Rowland and the French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they were unable to attend. This year they were able to fly in and be awarded the prize in person along with this year’s recipients. The winners of previous years were in attendance also. At the Vatican, they met with Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI and discussed their work with him before being addressed by Pope Francis.
During the address, Pope Francis reflected on a phrase from the third epistle of St John, ‘cooperatores veritatis’ (3 John, v.8), which means ‘co-operators in the truth’. When Joseph Ratzinger became the Archbishop of Munich, he chose this as his motto. Through Ratzinger’s life, teaching and ministries, Pope Francis said, he demonstrated ‘a luminous magisterium and an unfailing love for the Truth’.
Ratzinger was one of the world’s finest teachers, he said, who taught people ‘to think in order to live our relationship with God and with others ever more profoundly, to direct human action with virtues and above all with love’.
Tracey Rowland, author of Ratzinger’s Faith (2008), told Melbourne Catholic in 2020 that Joseph Ratzinger represents a treasure trove for young people to explore. Not only does he offer ‘a pathology report on our contemporary culture’ but he offers a holistic, synthesised vision of the faith that a fragmented culture so desperately needs:
What they have are fragments of the faith, bits of the jigsaw. If they read Ratzinger they can begin to put the fragments together.’
Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI is currently 94 years old and continues to live in a monastery in the Vatican gardens.
