VATICAN CITY (CNS) - German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the 78-year-old guardian of the church’s doctrine for the last 24 years, has been elected the 265th pope and took the name Benedict XVI.
Appearing at the central window of St. Peter’s Basilica shortly after being elected, the new pope smiled as he was greeted by a cheering, flag-waving crowd of nearly 100,000 people.
“After the great John Paul II, the cardinals elected me, a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord,” Pope Benedict said, in a brief talk broadcast around the world.
“I am consoled by the fact that the Lord can work and act even through insufficient instruments, and I especially entrust myself to your prayers,” he said.
“In the joy of the risen Lord, and trusting in his permanent help, we go forward. The Lord will help us, and Mary his most holy mother is on our side. Thank you,” he said.
Then Pope Benedict gave his blessing to the city of Rome and to the world. He stood and listened to the endless applause that followed, smiling and raising his hands above his head.
Among the few cardinals who joined him on the central balcony was U.S. Cardinal William W. Baum, the only voting cardinal besides the new pope to have participated in a previous conclave.
Following the conclusion to the conclave, Pope Benedict dined with the cardinals at their Vatican residence the evening of his election, stayed at the residence that night and celebrated Mass with them the next morning in the Sistine Chapel.
Pope Benedict was the first German pope since Pope Victor II, who reigned from 1055-1057. It was the second conclave in a row to elect a non-Italian pope, after Italians had held the papacy for more than 450 years.
The new pope was chosen by at least a two-thirds majority of 115 cardinals from 52 countries, who cast their ballots in secret in the Sistine Chapel.
The election came on the second day of the voting, presumably on the fourth ballot. It was a surprisingly quick conclusion of a conclave that began with many potential candidates and no clear favorite.
The day before, Cardinal Ratzinger had opened the conclave with a stern warning about moral relativism and ideological currents that had buffeted the church in recent decades.
“The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these wave, thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism,” he said.
“Every day new sects are created and what St. Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw people into error,” he said. Having a clear faith today is often labeled “fundamentalism,” he said.
As the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 1981, Pope Benedict was on the front lines of numerous theological and pastoral controversies. He was described by Vatican officials who worked with him as a kind and prayerful theologian and a gentler man than the one often portrayed in the media as an inquisitor.
He made the biggest headlines when his congregation silenced or excommunicated theologians, withdrew church approval of certain books, helped rewrite liturgical translations, set boundaries on ecumenical dialogues, took over the handling of cases of clergy sex abuse against minors, curbed the role of bishops’ conferences and pressured religious orders to suspend wayward members.
Pope Benedict’s election was announced in Latin to a waiting world from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. A massive crowd of young and old filled St. Peter’s Square and welcomed the news with cheers and waves of applause.
White smoke poured from the Sistine Chapel chimney at 5:49 p.m. signaling that the cardinals had chosen a successor to Pope John Paul II. At 6:04 p.m., the bells of St. Peter’s Basilica began pealing continuously to confirm the election.
At 6:40 p.m., Chilean Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, the senior cardinal in the order of deacons, appeared at the basilica balcony and intoned to the crowd in Latin: “Dear brothers and sisters, I announce to you a great joy. We have a pope.”
He continued: “The most eminent and reverend lordship, Lord Joseph Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church Ratzinger.”
The crowd in the square burst into applause. Some jumped for joy, some knelt to pray and some simply stood and watched.
During their pre-conclave meetings, journalists tracked Cardinal Ratzinger’s rising status among cardinal-electors, but most sources doubted he would obtain the 77 votes needed to win. He was seen as divisive by some in the church, and many thought the cardinals would choose someone with more pastoral experience.
In the end, the cardinals turned to a man who offered doctrinal firmness, a sharp intellect and a clear vision of the threats facing the church and the faith.
Born in Marktl am Inn April 16, 1927, his priestly studies began early but were interrupted by World War II.
While he was a seminarian, school officials enrolled him in the Hitler Youth program, but he soon stopped going to meetings. After being drafted in 1943 he served for a year on an anti-aircraft unit that tracked Allied bombardments. At the end of the war he spent time in a U.S. prisoner-of-war camp before being released.
Ordained in 1951, he received a doctorate and a licentiate in theology from the University of Munich, where he studied until 1957. He taught dogma and fundamental theology at the University of Freising in 1958-59, then lectured at the University of Bonn, 1959-1969, at Munster, 1963-66, and at Tubingen from 1966 to 1969. In 1969 he was appointed professor of dogma and of the history of dogmas at the University of Regensburg, where he also served as vice president until 1977.
A theological consultant to West German Cardinal Joseph Frings, he attended the Second Vatican Council as an expert or “peritus.” At the council, he was said to have played an influential role in discussions among the German-speaking participants and gained a reputation as a progressive theologian.
He was named a member of the International Theological Commission in 1969. Pope Paul VI appointed him archbishop of Munich and Freising in 1977 and named him a cardinal later that year.
Contributing to this story were Benedicta Cipolla and Jonathan Luxmoore in Rome.