During the Second Vatican Council Dr. Ratzinger was chief theological advisor to Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne. Following this he returned to teaching and held the chair of dogmatic theology at the University of Tübingen, a position supported by Hans Küng. The student riots and unrest of 1968 was to prove a turning point and after this he rejected his earlier liberalism and embraced a more orthodox Catholicism.

He was appointed Archbishop of Munich in 1977. Four years later, he assumed his best-known position as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office). This month, at the age of 78, he began a new career as leader of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world.