Beast of burden for the Church

Rita Ciolli, New York

The holy water had been blessed just hours before, at a vigil on the eve of Easter Sunday in 1927.

“To be the first person baptised with the new water was seen as a significant act of Providence,” Ratzinger would write years later in Milestones, his 1998 autobiography. Catholicism and the simple liturgical life of the Church dominated his early life and Ratzinger recalled a warm and happy family life with his parents and older siblings, Georg and Maria.