Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has travelled to Germany to visit his ailing older brother, Mgr Georg Ratzinger.

“The pope emeritus is now in the city of Regensburg, where he will spend the time necessary,” Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, said.

Pope Benedict, 93, was accompanied by his personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, one of the consecrated laywomen who cares for him and his household and the vice commander of the Vatican gendarme corps, Bruni said.

The two brothers, who were ordained to the priesthood together in 1951, have always been close. Mgr Ratzinger, 96, would come to the Vatican to spend Christmas and a summer holiday with his brother while Benedict was pope and after he stepped down from the papacy.

The two also had a sister, Maria, who died in 1991.

While Fr Joseph Ratzinger pursued advanced theology studies, served as a professor and an archbishop before moving to the Vatican as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and then as pope, Mgr Ratzinger became famous as director of the renowned Regensburg boys’ choir from 1964 to 1994, when he retired.

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