"looking for a good Catholic, pure girl who can cook well"

Aren't we all?

The German paper, Bild am Sonntag said 43-year-old Joseph Ratzinger senior placed an advertisement as a "low-level civil servant" seeking "a good Catholic girl ... to marry as soon as possible, preferably with a picture," in a Bavarian paper in March 1920.

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Four months later - by now a "mid-ranking civil servant" - he posted a similar notice in the same paper, and this time received a reply from Maria Peintner, 36, an illegitimate baker's daughter, the paper reported.

The second advert in the Altoetting weekly Liebfrauenbote stressed policeman Ratzinger's "irreproachable past" and said that while it would be "desirable" if his bride had some money, it was "not a condition" for marriage.

Both brothers were said yesterday to be taken aback by the discovery of the lonely hearts advertisement found in the Bavarian state archives by a researcher for the tabloid Bild.