Winners of 2013 Ratzinger Prize announced

21 June, 2013 - The 2013 Ratzinger Prize for Theology, nicknamed the "Nobel of Theology," will be awarded Richard Burridge, an English Biblical scholar and Christian Schaller, a German theologian from Bavaria. The announcement was made on Friday at a press conference in the Vatican by the Joseph Ratzinger Vatican Foundation, founded in 2010 with the approval of retired pontiff Benedict XVI to promote the publication, distribution and study of significant theological and philosophical scholarship. Burridge, a Minister of the Anglican Communion and Dean of King’s College, will be the first non-Catholic to be honoured with the prize. Meanwhile layman Christian Schaller, a professor of dogmatic theology, is the vice director of the Benedict XVI Institute of Regensburg. The Ratzinger Prize promotes the writings of Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI, and is financed by sale of his works. Burridge and Schaller will be honoured with the prize on October 26 during a 3-day symposium in the Vatican focusing on the retired Pope's "Jesus of Nazareth" books.