Pope Benedict's election brings back memories for nun

Published: 2005-05-04

SHORELINE, Wash. (CNS) -- She was an 11-year-old girl when the newly ordained priest came to her village parish on his first assignment. Over the years, they have stayed in touch, through letters and personal visits. The parish priest whom Sister Emmanuel, a Discalced Carmelite now living in Washington state, met five decades ago is now Pope Benedict XVI. "He'll be great," she said in an interview with The Catholic Northwest Progress, Seattle archdiocesan newspaper, at the Carmelite Monastery in the Seattle suburb of Shoreline. "We need a pope to lead us to Christ," she said about the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. "He is rock-solid and we really need that." Sister Emmanuel, who does not use a last name, is from Greinau bi Garmisch, a German village at the foot of the Alps. Newly ordained priests were regularly assigned to the parish of 700 families for their first parish experience. Then-Father Ratzinger and his brother, Father Georg Ratzinger, were both at that parish.

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