A day before he was elected Pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made clear the type of church he wanted: one that rigidly maintained the doctrines he himself had upheld as guardian of church orthodoxy, where there were absolute truths on matters such as abortion, celibacy and homosexuality.
With his election Tuesday in one of the fastest papal votes in a century, Pope Benedict XVI will most certainly build upon the uncompromising hard line on doctrine that he charted under Pope John Paul II.
His election will thrill conservatives seeking a consolidation of John Paul's policies. It will alienate more liberal Catholics, particularly in Europe and North America, who had hoped that after 26 years, a more progressive Pope might take the helm of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics.
And it will likely temper hopes around the world of improved relations with other religions.
"If he continues as Pope the way he was as a cardinal, I think we will see a polarized church," said David Gibson, a former Vatican Radio reporter and author of The Coming Catholic Church.
"He has said himself that he wanted a smaller but purer church," Gibson said, referring to Ratzinger's suggestion that Christianity may need to become smaller, in terms of its cultural significance, to remain true to itself.
As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 1981 and a close aide to John Paul, Ratzinger wielded enormous power in shaping church policy, silencing dissident theologians and signing off on virtually every document that had to do with doctrine.
During his tenure, the Vatican was uncompromising in its opposition to ordaining women, homosexuality and lifting the celibacy requirement for priests. Ratzinger opposed allowing remarried Catholics to receive Communion and told American bishops that it was appropriate to deny Communion to those who support such "manifest grave sin" as abortion and euthanasia.
Those policies will continue under Benedict XVI, who in celebrating the pre-conclave Mass on Monday made clear that the next Pope shouldn't bow to the "winds of doctrine" that tempted the faithful to stray from the core beliefs of the church.
"The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves, thrown from one extreme to the other," he said, listing Marxism, liberalism, atheism and relativism -- the ideology that there are no absolute truths.
The homily was classic Ratzinger, and clear evidence that at least doctrinally, the church he will lead will not divert from current teaching.
"Obviously a majority of the cardinals agreed with the analysis that in order to consolidate John Paul's legacy, the final part had to be done," said John-Peter Pham, a former Vatican official and author on papal succession.
But the style of the Benedict XVI papacy will likely be vastly different from that of John Paul, the personable archbishop of Krakow, Poland, who trotted the globe and brought a movie-star quality to the papacy.
Most importantly, Ratzinger is 78 -- two decades older than John Paul was when he was elected in 1978 -- and his health last year was "not that good" according to the Reverend Thomas Reese, a Vatican expert. He gave no specifics.
As a result, Ratzinger's papacy will be viewed as a shorter, transitional one.
"In a few years, we could be right back where we were, with a sick, elderly even perhaps dying Pope," Reese, editor of the Jesuit weekly America magazine said in an interview before the election.
Ratzinger also lacks the pastoral qualities that made John Paul so beloved. He is a bookish theologian who surprised thousands by choking up as he delivered John Paul's funeral homily -- a rare glimpse of emotion.
Even Ratzinger's brother, Georg, said his brother would be an "entirely different" Pope than John Paul.
"They had a good relationship, but he [Ratzinger] wouldn't have the faculty to deal with people in such a direct and immediate way and to fascinate them," he told the German TV station RTL this week.
But Pham and other Vatican watchers also say that there is more to Ratzinger than the world has seen in the past two decades, noting his love of music -- he is an accomplished pianist -- and his solid credentials as a scholar.
Ratzinger's writings and comments give a hint about what his papacy will bring.
He has opposed Turkey's bid to join the EU and dismissed demands for European "multiculturalism" as a "fleeing from what is one's own."
He has also made sure John Paul's efforts to reach out to other religions didn't overstep certain bounds. His 2000 decree "Dominus Iesus," which framed the role of the Catholic Church in human salvation in an exclusive manner, upset Protestants, Jews and other non-Christians.
Ratzinger further rankled other Christians when he said he didn't want Protestant churches referred to as "sister churches" by Catholics.
Ratzinger has written that Jews were "connected with God in a special way." But in his book God and the World, he also said "We wait for the instant in which Israel will say yes to Christ."
He has spoken out positively about Islam, saying it has had "moments of great splendor."
While Ratzinger criticized the media for focusing too much on the sins of priests involved in the church sex abuse scandal, he excoriated the "filth" in the church in a meditation he penned for the Good Friday Way of the Cross procession.
An uncrewed Chinese spacecraft has acquired imagery data covering all of Mars, including visuals of its south pole, after circling the planet more than 1,300 times since early last year, state media reported yesterday. The Tianwen-1 successfully reached the Red Planet in February last year on the country’s inaugural mission there. A robotic rover has since been deployed on the surface as an orbiter surveyed the planet from space. Among the images taken from space were China’s first photographs of the Martian south pole, where almost all of the planet’s water resources are locked. In 2018, an orbiting probe operated by the European
QUARANTINE SHORTENED: A new protocol detailing risk levels and local policy responses would be ‘more scientific and accurate,’ a health agency spokesman said China’s revised COVID-19 guidelines, which cut a quarantine requirement in half for inbound travelers, also create a standardized policy for mass testing and lockdowns when cases of the disease flare, showing that the country still has a zero-tolerance approach to the virus. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) solidified the position during a trip to Wuhan, where the pathogen first emerged in 2019, saying that China is capable of achieving a “final victory” over the virus. The “zero COVID-19” policy is the most effective and economic approach for the country, Xi said during the trip on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency reported. The first
‘TOO RISKY’: Palau’s president said deep-sea mining, in which rocks are sucked off the ocean floor, increases the vulnerability of the seabed floor and marine life Concerned about the potential effects of deep-sea mining on ocean biodiversity, the Pacific islands of Palau and Fiji on Monday launched an “alliance” to call for a moratorium of the nascent industry. The backing of a moratorium comes amid a wave of global interest in deep-sea mining, but also growing pressure from some environmental groups and governments to either ban it or ensure it only goes ahead if appropriate regulations are in place. Deep-sea mining uses heavy machinery to suck up off the ocean floor potato-sized rocks or nodules that contain cobalt, manganese and other metals mostly used in batteries. Speaking to a
A flight test of a hypersonic missile system in Hawaii on Wednesday ended in failure due to a problem that occurred after ignition, the US Department of Defense said, delivering a fresh blow to a program that has experienced stumbles. It did not provide details of what took place in the test, but said in an e-mailed statement that “the department remains confident that it is on track to field offensive and defensive hypersonic capabilities on target dates beginning in the early 2020s.” “An anomaly occurred following ignition of the test asset,” Pentagon spokesman US Navy Lieutenant Commander Tim Gorman said in
RSS