VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Even in the midst of the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, St. Peter Canisius knew how to defend Catholic doctrine without launching personal attacks on those who disagreed, Pope Benedict XVI said.

St. Peter, a 15th-century Jesuit sent on mission to Germany, knew how to “harmoniously combine fidelity to dogmatic principles with the respect due to each person,” the pope said Feb. 9 at his weekly general audience.

The pope was beginning a series of audience talks about “doctors of the church,” who are theologians and saints who made important contributions to Catholic understanding of theology. In St. Peter Canisius’ own time, more than 200 editions of his catechisms were published, the pope said, and they were so popular in Germany for so long that up until “my father’s generation, people called a catechism simply a ‘Canisius.'”

The saint, who was born in Holland, insisted there was a difference between willfully turning away from the faith and “the loss of faith that was not a person’s fault under the circumstances, and he declared to Rome that the majority of Germans who passed to Protestantism were without fault,” Pope Benedict said.