In John Paul's footsteps

Apr 20th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

The choice of Joseph Ratzinger, an arch-conservative German, as pope is unsurprising. It will delight traditionalist Catholics but disappoint those hoping for more flexibility than John Paul II offered on controversial issues, such as birth control, homosexuality and euthanasia

“HABEMUS Papam.” On Tuesday April 19th, the world’s Catholics heard the words they had been waiting for: “We have a pope.” The senior cardinal deacon of the Catholic church announced to an enormous throng in St Peter’s Square in Rome that Joseph Ratzinger was now Benedict XVI. He is the first Germanic pope since 1523.

Cardinal Ratzinger was chosen on the second day of the conclave of the college of cardinals, on the fourth ballot. This was a quick choice: the cardinal was a well-known figure going into the conclave (one betting website had given him three-to-one odds of winning). He was a close aide to Pope John Paul II, who died on April 2nd, and, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had been the official guardian of the church’s doctrinal orthodoxy since 1981. As such, he was an unsurprising choice.

But to many, he will inevitably be a disappointing one. Many Catholics and non-Catholics alike had hoped that the new pope might be different from pontiffs past. One reason was doctrine. The papacy of John Paul II is remembered for the geopolitical changes, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, in which he played a part. But while the world changed, the church’s doctrine did not: John Paul refused to budge on priestly celibacy, homosexuality, euthanasia, ordination of women, birth control and just about every other point of controversy. He ruled with a sceptre of iron, centralising the church's power.

Some hoped that the new pope would be a progressive figure, perhaps like John XXIII, who surprised many by convening the liberalising Vatican II council in the 1960s. But Cardinal Ratzinger—known by some as the “panzer cardinal”—is a doctrinal arch-conservative, and not shy about it. Now that he has been chosen (as the church has it) by the Holy Spirit, he is unlikely to change his ways. The new pope attended Vatican II and supported it at the time, but has since come to think that it may have gone too far. In 1972 he founded a journal, Communio, and has since used it to make the intellectual case for doctrinal permanence.

But the church’s reputation has been wounded by a number of developments linked to its hewing to a conservative line. Some blame clerical celibacy for the rash of paedophilia cases that have rocked the church in recent years. And the refusal to condone the use of condoms has helped the spread of AIDS; the church has not only refused to change its stance, but has even promoted shoddy science purporting to show that condoms are ineffective in preventing transmission of HIV.

This inflexibility is seen as having alienated many Catholics from regular church attendance in the religion's traditional heartland, Europe. Just a quarter of Italians attend mass weekly. The cardinals may have chosen a European to try to stem the church’s decline on the continent. But John Paul II, despite being wildly popular, could not reverse its decline in his native Poland, where it is no longer socially obligatory to attend mass. It is hard to see his arch-conservative successor doing better in liberal Europe.

Hence a second line of speculation: that the cardinals would choose the first-ever pope from Latin America, Africa or Asia. Of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics, almost half a billion live in Latin America, where there has been less of a fall in piety than in Europe. But Protestant groups have been winning converts in the region, and the cardinals could have sent an embracing signal by choosing a Latin American pontiff. Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, a Honduran who has focused on poverty and criticised globalisation, was seen as one possible choice. Alternatively, the church could have broken new ground with less risk by choosing a conservative from another poor region where Catholicism is growing, not shrinking: Africa. Much pre-conclave speculation centred on the doctrinally orthodox Cardinal Francis Arinze, from Nigeria.

Cardinal Arinze was tipped by some because he had headed the Vatican body that maintains links with other religions, and was thus seen as a man who could develop the church’s dialogue with them—crucially, with Islam. John Paul broke new ground here. He apologised to Jews for Catholic passivity during the Holocaust, prayed at a Syrian mosque and took steps to heal the rift between Catholics and adherents of the various eastern Orthodox churches. Will Benedict XVI continue the trend? As a cardinal he signed a document proclaiming the Catholic church superior to all others. But John Paul did not repudiate that document as pope, and yet managed to reach out.

In his first mass as pope, on Wednesday, Benedict spoke of the need for a “full and visible unity of all the followers of Christ”, and of “an open and sincere dialogue” with other religions. But as Cardinal Ratzinger several days earlier, he had sharply criticised the creation of new “sects” (Vatican code for evangelical groups) which lead Christians into “error”. The world must wait to see how unifying such a doctrinaire figure can really be.

Finally, there is the question of how long Benedict will, as he put it in his words to the faithful in St Peter’s Square, toil “in the vineyard of the Lord”. John Paul was just 58 when elected pope in 1978, and travelled extensively during one of the longest papacies in history. At 78, Benedict is the oldest man to be made pope since the 18th century, and his voice trembled slightly as he spoke to the crowd in Rome. Of course, it may not have been age. Even a confident man like the new pope might be forgiven a little nervousness upon assuming control of the world’s biggest church during a pivotal time in its history.

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