[Mb-civic] Conservative German cardinal elected pope

[Alexander Harper]

I know - and we all have to refrain from jokes about 'Good Sheherds' and 'German Shepherds'.
AlBaraka
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Butler" <michael at michaelbutler.com>
To: Civic <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Subject: [Mb-civic] Conservative German cardinal elected pope
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 20:19:41 -0700

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> FT.com
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> Conservative German cardinal elected pope
> > By Tony Barber in Rome
> > Published: April 19 2005 17:05 | Last updated: April 19 2005 17:05
> >>
> 
> Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a doctrinal conservative and close ally of the
> late Pope John Paul II, was elected the next pope of the Roman Catholic
> Church on Tuesday after one of the quickest conclaves of the past century.
> The 78-year-old German-born theologian who will be know as Benedict XVI, was
> elected in the fourth ballot of a conclave attended by 115 cardinal-electors
> from 52 countries in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.
> 
> It was the fastest election since the choice of Pius XII in 1939. Cardinal
> Ratzinger served for 24 years as the head of John Paul's Congregation for
> the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's agency for doctrinal orthodoxy. His
> election is likely to unnerve many lay Catholics who were hoping for a more
> progressive pope after John Paul. But for the moment, celebrations were the
> order of the day for the Church and its faithful.
> 
> Tens of thousands of people in Rome's St Peter's Square erupted into cheers
> as the great bells of the basilica that dominates the piazza rang out,
> signalling that the cardinals had reached their decision. "Long live the
> pope!" cried out a contingent of Polish pilgrims.
> 
> Under the Church's rules, the new pope needed to be chosen by a two-thirds
> majority - that is, by 77 cardinals. The speed with which the electoral
> college reached its decision sent a strong signal of unity to the world's
> 1.1bn Catholic believers.
> 
> Nevertheless, the new pope will have to grapple with serious divisions over
> social and ethical issues that widened in the Church during the 26-year
> reign of John Paul, who died on April 2.
> 
> Soon after the cardinals' decision, bells began to ring at Catholic churches
> around the world, and television stations in dozens of countries interrupted
> their programmes to announce that a pope had been elected.
> 
> For several minutes, there was great tension among the crowds at St Peter's
> as smoke billowed out of the chimney above the Sistine Chapel. White smoke
> signals the election of a pope, black smoke that no decision has been
> reached, but the smoke that rose into the sky at around 6pm Rome time was of
> an indistinct colour - creating a confusion that mounted as the bells of St
> Peter's did not at first ring out.
> 
> € Joseph Ratzinger served in the Hitler Youth during World War Two when
> membership was compulsory, according to his autobiography, reports Reuters.
> 
> But he was never a member of the Nazi party and his family opposed Adolf
> Hitler¹s regime, biographers have said.
> 
> Ratzinger¹s experiences during World War Two have been a source of
> controversy in some newspapers which probed the German pope¹s past after
> Pope John Paul died and he quickly became a frontrunner to succeed the
> deceased pontiff.
> 
> In his autobiography ³Milestone: Memoirs: 1927-1977², Ratzinger said he and
> his brother Georg were both enrolled in the Hitler Youth when membership was
> obligatory.
> 
> Founded in 1922 and based in Ratzinger¹s native region of Bavaria, the
> Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organisation of the Nazi Party. It was
> disbanded in 1923 but re-established in 1926, a year after the Nazi Party
> was recognised.
> 
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 
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> 
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