Georg Ratzinger believes his younger brother Joseph first decided to embark on a career in the Roman Catholic Church when he was still only four or five years old, during a visit to their Bavarian hometown by a cardinal in the spring of 1932.

"He came home and told our father that night, 'I want to be a cardinal,'" Georg recalled in a 2005 interview.

As far as careers go, they don't get any better than this.

Ordained a priest in 1951, Joseph Ratzinger was still in his 30s when he took part as a consultant in the landmark Second Vatican Council of 1962-65 and had just turned 50 when he was proclaimed a "prince of the Church," a cardinal, by Pope Paul VI in 1977.

On April 16, on the verge of the second anniversary of his election as Pope Benedict XVI, his 80th birthday will be celebrated not only in Rome and in his homeland of Germany, but throughout the world.

Click on any of the links below to find out more about the German-born leader of the world's more than one billion Catholics in this special DW-WORLD.DE dossier.