New Pope a Good Pick???

Today, April 19, 2005, history was made. After only four votes during a two day period, which is one of the shortest sessions in 100 years, the cardinals elected the new pope. He is the oldest pope elected since Clement XII in 1730 and the first Germanic pope in nearly 1,000 years. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, a 78 year old transitional leader became Pope Benedict XVI. Many are elated to hear of his election, while others are less than thrilled. Throughout the history of Joseph Ratzinger’s career in the church, he has been known to strictly enforce conservative policies for the world's Roman Catholics. Pope Benedict XVI is very fiery and outspoken against tendencies that he considers to be dangerous to the Roman Catholic faith. These include: sects, ideologies like Marxism, liberalism, atheism, agnosticism and relativism — the ideology that there are no absolute truths. The cardinals clearly agreed with Ratzinger’s ideology that "John Paul confronted two totalitarianisms — Nazism and communism — and that what remains is the `dictatorship of relativism”. Benedict comes from the Latin for "blessing" and is one of a number of papal names of holy origin such as Clement ("mercy"), Innocent ("hopeful" as well as "innocent") and Pius ("pious"). John Paul was elected to deal with many challenging issues in 1978, including the communist system and abortion. Now, Benedict faces many new issues: dialogue with Islam, stem cell research, the ongoing issue of abortion and gay marriage, and problems within the church including priests molesting children and a lack of priests. Hopefully this pope can follow in the footsteps of John Paul and help end violence and hate in this world, and maybe even help with the gas prices! www.yahoo.com, www.nbcnews.com