Benedict — who was born Joseph Ratzinger — "fell in love … in a very serious way" as a student and struggled "very much" with the idea of taking a vow of celibacy when he became a priest.
"He was really a very smart-looking guy, a handsome young man, an aesthete who wrote poetry and read Hermann Hesse," Seewald told the German newsweekly Die Zeit in a story published Thursday. "A fellow student told me he had quite an effect on women, and vice versa. The decision to choose celibacy wasn't easy for him."
The news brought to mind other stories in that vein, such as the confession by Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio — which emerged the week after he was elected Pope Francis in 2013 – that he was "dazzled" by a young woman he met at a relative's wedding while he was a young man in seminary.
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