The former East German secret service considered Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, one of the most dangerous critics of communism and spied on him starting in 1974, a leading weekly reported Sunday.
The Bild am Sonntag released excerpts of vast files showing that the secret police, or Stasi, closely watched Ratzinger for years, collecting biographical details, information from spies and expectations of his next moves.
Ratzinger's friendship with Polish-born Pope John Paul II - who Poles today largely credit with giving them the courage to challenge communism - was viewed by the Stasi as particularly dangerous.
"Since the mid-70s, Ratzinger has been a close friend of the former Cardinal Wojtyla, for whose papacy he worked very hard and who tapped him in 1980 to organize the church's support in West Germany for the counterrevolutionary developments in Poland,'" read one of the files, referring to Solidarity protests against the communists.
The East Germans feared the Bavarian-born Ratzinger, whom they regarded as "one of the strongest critics of communism in the Vatican'' would "increasingly have influence over the anti-communist bias of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly in Latin America,'' according to excerpts printed by the paper.
Further excerpts showed the Stasi had failed in its 1981 search of old Nazi-era records to find any indication that Ratzinger had been involved with the Nazi party.
"Documents on R. from the time before May 8, 1945 are not available,'' the files state, referring to him by only his initial.
Ratzinger has said he was unwillingly enrolled in the Hitler Youth as a teenager. Near the end of the war he was later drafted into the German army and deserted without seeing combat. American forces took him prisoner, but released him after several weeks.
Bild am Sonntag said Benedict had personally granted it the right to reproduce parts of the files. Vatican officials declined Sunday to comment on the report.
Ratzinger was so closely followed that the Stasi was able to predict his being named prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the post he held before being named pope - two years before it happened in 1981.
In addition, one agent noted something about the Ratzinger's personality that has been revealed to the public since he became pope: "He has a certain charm, although he may seem somewhat shy initially."
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