VW Golf For Sale: One Papal Owner

According to its current custodian, it is a nice little runner that "is heavenly to drive." But it's not the Golf's performance that is pushing its value through the roof. It's the fact that it was once owned by a certain Joseph Ratzinger, the former cardinal now better known as Pope Benedict XVI.

Benjamin Halbe got his hands on the private pope-to-be mobile courtesy of a car dealer in January of this year and obviously could not foresee what a desired motor his new car would become three months later.

Car comes with full service history and a blessing

"I had no idea," said the 21-year-old. The dealer only told him that the car had been passed onto him with an ecclesiastical blessing. Confused, it was only after Halbe had read the service history of his new vehicle that he discovered that one of the former owners had been the pope formerly known as Cardinal Ratzinger. "It was only then that I knew what the dealer had been talking about."

For Kurt Schneider, the car dealer in question, the Golf seemed just like another second-hand car passing through his hands from one owner to the next although he did know that it had had a famous driver in its past.

Benedict XVI a famous back-seat driver

The former Cardinal Ratzinger's private secretary had long been a customer of the dealership and, although it is well known in church circles that the pope does not have a drivers license, it is believed the Golf was used to ferry the Holy Father-to-be around before at some point in 1999.

Halbe looks set to make a heavenly profit on the car. After paying 10,000 euros ($12,905) for the Golf at the start of the year, he is likely to more than quadruple that sum by the time the auction runs out in seven days. The bid at the time of publication was 36,550 euros.