The Great Game

This article claims to have secret sources inside the Vatican and it claims to explain the reasoning behind the choice of Benedict XVI, both the name and the man. The short version is he was chosen because he was old, well-known, conservative, and claimed to seek concilliation. The name Benedict is a reference to both Saint Benedict, the parton saint of Europe, and Benedict XV, who's papcy covered WWI, and who tried to stop the war through negotiations. Apparently the number one focus of the church will be to reverse its decline in Europe. A tough challenge given the direction of European society.

Jax

Behind the sealed doors of the Sistine Chapel, the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church burst into applause Tuesday afternoon when, after four rounds of voting, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger received more than the 77 votes needed to become pope.

Head bowed, Ratzinger remained silent, unmoving.

Then the hush spread to the 114 other cardinals as they awaited the new pope's Accepto, his formal acceptance. In a low voice roughened by a cold, Ratzinger told them he would like to be known as Benedict XVI, honoring Saint Benedict, the patron saint of Europe, and Benedict XV, the pope who tried to stop the First World War.

"I, too, hope in this short reign to be a man of peace," the new pope said, according to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.

With those words, Benedict XVI opened his papacy with a prediction -- that he would not hold the throne of Saint Peter as long as John Paul II -- and a promise -- that he would promote conciliation. Both ideas appear to have been crucial to his election.

Although the cardinals swore an oath of perpetual secrecy about what occurred in the conclave, many began to talk about it on Wednesday. Some said they had long been convinced that Ratzinger was the right man. Others said his performance at John Paul's funeral and other rituals in recent days had made a deeply favorable impression.

In any case, the 78-year-old German cardinal steadily built support before and during the two-day conclave, according to these accounts. He ate breakfast with African and Asian cardinals. He assured U.S. prelates that he was in tune with their efforts to deal with child sexual abuse by priests. He sought to allay fears that he would set back attempts at interfaith dialogue.

After the 26-year pontificate of John Paul, some cardinals did not want another long reign; for them, Ratzinger's age was reassuring. Others were concerned that the Vatican's longtime guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy might come across to ordinary Catholics as too severe; for them, his desire to step out of his old role and to be a conciliator, a man of peace, was vital.

Moreover, the opposition was fractured. Three key Spanish-speaking cardinals firmly backed Ratzinger from the outset, as did two influential Italians. That meant there was not unified backing for either an Italian or a Latin American candidate.

The buzz around Ratzinger began long before the conclave, said Cardinal Rosalio Jose Castillo Lara, a nonvoting prelate from Venezuela. "I begged him, 'If they elect you, don't refuse,' " Castillo Lara said. He added that Ratzinger had an advantage in presiding over the funeral rites. "He did them well, and very serenely and with much humility," Castillo Lara said. "He showed himself to be very prepared."

A week before the conclave, Italian newspapers reported that Ratzinger already had a solid bloc of votes -- 40 according to Corriere della Sera, 50 according to La Repubblica.

Asked when the cardinals began focusing on Ratzinger as a candidate, McCarrick replied with a grin: "When we read the newspapers. Because the newspapers were telling us that Cardinal Ratzinger is the favorite. So we see, the Holy Spirit may speak through the newspapers -- sometimes even the Italian newspapers."

In the run-up to the conclave, the cardinals met daily in a modern hall inside the Vatican's medieval walls to discuss issues facing the church, including the spread of Islam, economic globalization and the ethical dilemmas raised by biotechnology.

These sessions were also covered by an oath of secrecy. But several cardinals made clear on Wednesday that the march of secularization across Western Europe was the number one problem on their minds, and that Ratzinger seemed to be part of the solution.

On Monday morning, the cardinals attended the traditional Mass for the election of a pope at St. Peter's, where Ratzinger gave a stinging homily against the West's creeping "dictatorship of relativism." Those who hold firmly to belief in God and moral absolutes, he said, are accused of fundamentalism, while the only socially acceptable attitude seems to be that everything is relative and nothing is clearly right or wrong.

In effect, it laid out the philosophy behind Ratzinger's two decades of work as head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

According to aides to two non-American cardinals, Ratzinger entered the conclave with firm backing from three influential cardinals with ties to the conservative renewal movement Opus Dei: Julian Herranz of Spain, head of the Vatican's department for interpreting legislative texts; Dario Castrillon Hoyos of Colombia, head of the department in charge of the clergy; and Alfonso Lopez Trujillo of Colombia, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

This meant the Spanish-speaking electors had not coalesced around a Latin American candidate, despite speculation that they might support such cardinals as Claudio Hummes of Brazil or Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras.

Meanwhile, two leading Italian prelates, Camillo Ruini of Rome and Angelo Scola of Venice, also openly supported Ratzinger. Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan, widely seen as a possible candidate, "came in very disadvantaged," said one of the aides, speaking on condition of anonymity. (Link)