CAn't say that I am overjoyed: I really hoped that they would go for a non-European and that 'God's rotweiler' as Ratzinger has been nicknamed, might be bypassed. However, there was an argument, I suspect, for a caretaker papacy while the RC's 'absorbed the impact' of J-PII. Ratzinger is 78, and although he might live another 20 years, it's unlikely. Perhaps a 10 year papacy and then ... maybe then the two thirds world gets a look in.
Part of me hopes that his conservatism will push RC's to breaking point over various issues and begin to shift the whole church to complete the aggiornamento begun in Vatican II. But I'm a lapsed Catholic whose childhood was marked, unknowingly, at the time by the failures of the RC church to follow-through ... but that's another story.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Ratzinger named as Pope Benedict XVI
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