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| | The Ledger: Lakeland, Polk County, Florida |
 | | In an episode certain to be scrutinized anew, Joseph Ratzinger was briefly and unenthusiastically a member of the Hitler Youth in his early teens, after membership became mandatory in 1941, according to a biography by John L. Allen Jr., who covers the Vatican for The National Catholic Reporter. |
 | | Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn in Bavaria, the youngest of three children. |
 | | As the Nazis strengthened their stranglehold on Germany in the 1930's, the strongly Catholic family of Joseph Ratzinger moved frequently among villages in rural Bavaria. |
| www.theledger.com /apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050420/ZNYT03/504200402 (725 words) |
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