Benedict XVI begins work at Vatican

'This is so terrible'
Evelyn Strauch, a 54-year-old housewife from Ratzinger’s home state of Bavaria, buried her head in her hands and wept as she stood in St. Peter’s.

“This can’t be true,” she said. “I had hoped so much that we would get a good pope who would do something for women. ... This is so terrible.”

Mark Wunsch, 27, a religious philosophy student from Denver, was elated.

“The cardinals elected a good and holy man who was close to Pope John Paul II,” he said. “He’ll be a wonderful and good leader in preaching the truth and love.”

Benedict inherits a range of pressing issues. These include priest sex-abuse scandals that have cost the church millions of dollars in settlements in the United States and elsewhere, chronic shortages of priests and nuns in the West, and calls for easing the ban on condoms to help fight the spread of AIDS.

And he has to follow in the footsteps of John Paul II, the global pontiff who made 104 international trips in his more than 26 years as pope and set new standards in reaching out to other religions.

In an indication that he would indeed travel and continue to reach out to young people, Benedict said Wednesday he planned to attend the church’s World Youth Day celebrations in Cologne, Germany, in August.

Two images
Two images of Ratzinger have emerged in recent days.

With his wispy silver hair blowing in the wind, the German prelate stood before the world’s political and spiritual leaders at John Paul’s funeral April 8 and offered an eloquent and sensitive farewell that moved some to tears.

Then, just before the cardinals entered the conclave Monday, he made clear where he stands ideologically, using words that John Paul would surely have endorsed. He warned about tendencies that he considered dangers to the faith: sects and ideologies like Marxism, liberalism, atheism, agnosticism and relativism — the ideology that there are no absolute truths.

“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires,” he said.

He has denounced rock music, dismissed anyone who had tried to find “feminist” meanings in the Bible, and last year told American bishops it was appropriate to deny Communion to those who support abortion and euthanasia.

Benedict is the first Germanic pope in nearly 1,000 years. His faith is rooted in Bavaria, the Alpine region with Germany’s strongest Catholic identity. Like many of his generation, he carries the burden of Germany’s past.

In his memoirs, the policeman’s son wrote of being enrolled in Hitler’s Nazi youth movement against his will when he was 14 in 1941, when membership was compulsory. He says he was soon let out because of his studies for the priesthood.

He and his older brother, Georg, were ordained in 1951. He taught theology and earned a reputation as a forward-looking prelate. He took part in the Second Vatican Council, but had some reservations.

Returning to Germany between sessions of the council, “I found the mood in the church and among theologians to be agitated,” he wrote in his memoirs. “More and more there was the impression that nothing stood fast in the church, that everything was up for revision.”

In 1977, he was appointed bishop of Munich and elevated to cardinal three months later by Pope Paul VI. He was one of only two cardinals in the latest conclave who were not chosen by John Paul.

MORE FROM POPE REMEMBERED

Pope remembered Section Front

Images: Final farewell for Pope John Paul II   Images: A historic papacy   Images: Paying respects to late pontiff   Images: Mourning Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II remembered NBC: Perhaps ‘Saint John Paul? Benedict watches movie about John Paul II Live Vote: Sainthood for John Paul? Quiz: How much do you remember? Pope remembered Section Front   Add Pope remembered headlines to your news reader: