http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7367404/?GT1=6365

VATICAN CITY - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, a hard-line guardian of conservative doctrine, was elected the new pope Tuesday evening in the first conclave of the new millennium. He chose the name Pope Benedict XVI and called himself “a simple, humble worker.”


Ratzinger, the first German pope since the 11th century, emerged onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, where he waved to a wildly cheering crowd of tens of thousands and gave his first blessing as pope. Other cardinals clad in their crimson robes came out on other balconies to watch him.

“Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me — a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord,” he said. “I entrust myself to your prayers,” the pope said.

“The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers,” the new pope said. “I entrust myself to your prayers.”

The crowd responded by chanting “Benedict! Benedict!”




If the new pope was paying tribute to the last pontiff of that name, it could be interpreted as a bid to soften his image as the Vatican’s doctrinal hard-liner. Benedict XV, who reigned from 1914 to 1922, was a moderate following Pius X, who had implemented a sharp crackdown against doctrinal “modernism.”

On Monday, Ratzinger, who was the powerful dean of the College of Cardinals, used his homily at the Mass dedicated to electing the next pope to warn the faithful about tendencies that he considered dangers to the faith: sects, ideologies like Marxism, liberalism, atheism, agnosticism and relativism — the ideology that there are no absolute truths.

“Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism,” he said, speaking in Italian. “Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and ‘swept along by every wind of teaching,’ looks like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards.

Ratzinger served John Paul II since 1981 as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In that position, he has disciplined church dissidents and upheld church policy against attempts by liberals for reforms. He turned 78 on Saturday.

The new pope had gone into the conclave with the most buzz among two dozen leading candidates. He had impressed many faithful with his stirring homily at the funeral of John Paul II, who died April 2 at age 84.

Bells ringing from the Vatican earlier confirmed that cardinals had reached a decision and that, along with white smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney, caused crowds in St. Peter's Square to chant, “Viva il Papa!” or “Long live the pope!”

The square quickly filled up as thousands of people began streaming in as word of the decision spread.

The conclave of 115 cardinals lasted for two days, and no conclave in the past century had lasted more than five days. The election that made John Paul II pope in October 1978 took eight ballots over three days.

'Powerful' moment

“It’s very powerful to be in the place where St. Peter was martyred and to pray to the Lord for a worthy successor,” said Brother Mateo Lethimonier, 30, a monk from Argentina in a light blue robe and sandals who was among those on the square before the decision was announced.

He said he was praying for the cardinals to find “the one who loves Jesus most, the one who represents the church best.”

On Monday evening, black smoke that initially looked light enough to throw even Vatican Radio analysts off-guard poured from the chimney, disappointing a crowd of 40,000 pilgrims anxious for a sign that the cardinals had settled on a successor. That first puff followed the conclave’s initial vote.

“We thought it was white. Then it went black. I had a feeling of exhilaration followed by disappointment,” said Harold Reeves, a 35-year-old theology student from Washington, D.C.


There was similar confusion following a first smoke signal on Tuesday. Even the second signal was confusing at first, looking black and white at times before the decision was confirmed by the bells.

The smoke is part of a church tradition for electing a pope. White means a decision after a round of balloting, black means no clear decision.

Challenges ahead
A quick decision in the first round of voting on Monday would have been a surprise. The cardinals have a staggering range of issues to juggle as they choose the first new pope of the 21st century — fallout from priest sex-abuse scandals, chronic shortages of priests and nuns, as well as calls for sharper activism against poverty and easing the ban on condoms to help combat AIDS.

The next pontiff also must maintain the global ministry of John Paul, who took 104 international trips in his more than 26-year papacy.

“Keep praying for the new pope,” said 82-year-old Cardinal Luis Aponte Martinez of Puerto Rico, who was too old to join the conclave, open only to cardinals under 80 years old.

It was the first time in more than a generation that crowds had stared at the chimney for the famous smoke and word of a new pope. In that time, the church has been pulled in two directions: a spiritual renaissance under John Paul, but battered by scandals and a flock pressing for less rigid teachings.

new king of the pedophiles...so what.

"I liked it," Gilliam said of playing gunner on punt team. "It was the first time I did anything like that. It was fun. It felt like, if he wasn't fair catching it, he was disrespecting me, so I was trying to take a head off if I could." Response-ability

this a message board dominated by blacks and we have an anchor post about a white racist pedophile catholic church? SURELY THE BLACK MAN IS LOST!

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1020400,00.html

There are far more important issues in regards to black people that need to be anchored instead of this bullshit.

The world doesn't turn on your command. This isn't a purely black discussion forum, and even if it was, there are black Catholics. Go eat a beanpie and shut the fuck up.
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what the phuck does a white racist pedophile being named head of the catholic church have do with black people?

>what the phuck does a white racist pedophile being named head
>of the catholic church have do with black people?

In the United States there are more than 2,000,000 Black Catholics in 1300 Black parishes. African Catholics make up 17% of the world's Catholic population. There are 1,000,000,000 Catholics around the globe. That means 170,000,000 of them live on the continent. I'm sure if we were to look up the number of Black Catholics throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, I bet there would be bunch of them too.

PEACE

Globally, the black Catholic Diaspora includes more than 200 million members. There are 130 million African Catholics. About 60 million black Catholics live in Latin and South America and 15 million more on the island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In the United States, roughly two million of the 54 million total Catholics are African American. The fastest-growing group of black Catholics in this country are immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America.

colonization is a motherfucker

word up

Thats a serious allegation, and you probably shouldn't just throw it around like that.


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Only after the last river has been poisoned
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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1020400,00.html

the pope and other high ranking officials within the catholic church have been covering up the pedophile sex ring within its ranks for a long ass time. thousands of children have been molested by priests and the shit gets only less than .01% of the media coverage michael jackson gets. i seriously doubt that the new pope has no knowledge or participated in any homosexual activity. all one has to is independently research this topic to connect the dots.

We already knew the Vatican protects their priests. After all, Cardinal Law was a featured speaker after John Paul's death.

That doesn't prove he or Benedict was an actual pedophile. Of course, you would try to stretch the truth to make it seem as if they were behind it too.
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April 20, 2005 4:05 AM

New pope shelved sex abuse claim, accuser says

By Alistair Bell

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A former trainee priest who has accused the founder of an influential Catholic order of sexual abuse said on Tuesday that new Pope Benedict XVI deliberately shelved a probe into his claims for six years.

Jose Barba is one of eight ex-members of the Rome-based Legion of Christ, most of them Mexicans, who accuse the order's founder, Marcial Maciel, of sexually abusing them from the 1940s through the 1960s.

The allegations are too old to be investigated under criminal law but nine former members brought a suit against Maciel, 84, under the Vatican's canonical law in 1998. One has since died.

The case was filed at the Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who was elected Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday.

Barba, spokesman for the accusers, says the claims were hushed up because Maciel and his ultra-conservative order were close to Pope John Paul II.

"The question is: Was Cardinal Ratzinger totally and solely responsible? I think that to a great extent he was because it was his department," said Barba, now 68 and a professor of Latin American studies at Mexico City's ITAM university.

Maciel stepped down as leader of the Legion of Christ, citing his age, a month after the Vatican finally announced last December it would take up the abuse allegations.

"EMBARRASSING"

Barba alleged that the Church's willingness to probe the issue could have been an attempt by Ratzinger to clean up the matter to improve his chances of becoming pope.

"It would have been very embarrassing for the cardinal to turn up at the conclave with the reputation of someone who had covered up a scandal," the Mexican said.

Maciel, who lives in Rome, has denied the abuse charges.

"The Legion of Christ struggles to express how deeply we regret that the accusers attempt to tar the Vatican, Cardinal Ratzinger, and even Pope John Paul II with the stain of these false allegations," it said in a statement that has been on its Web site for three years.

Founded in 1941, the order has around 500 priests and 2,500 seminarians in some 20 countries including Spain and the United States.

A Mexican bishop handed Ratzinger a letter in 2000 outlining allegations of abuse by Maciel against a Spanish priest, said Barba, who accuses the Legion founder of molesting him in Rome in the 1950s.

Barba said that when he handed another letter to a Vatican official in 2002 detailing alleged abuses, he was told that the missive would be forwarded to Ratzinger.

Maciel was warmly praised by John Paul on the 60th anniversary of his ordination last November but the probe against him was announced just days later.


Reuters

all you've brought up are accusations that he possibly helped cover for another priest. We already know that.

I'm waiting.
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/19/184327/493

but how many priests outside of this country have been accused of this behavior?

I realize that John Paul II fucked up real bad by not addressing this earlier. I shouldn't speculate to why he did this, but if I had to guess, he was getting old and didn't think that he had the capabliities to handle it. That is not an excuse.

Perhaps this pope will deal with it. But I think we should at least give him a chance (more than a day after he was elected) before we start throwing what is in my opinion, one of the worst things you can call someone.

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Only after the last tree has been cut down
Only after the last fish has been caught
Only after the last river has been poisoned
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He's one of those sideway-thinkers that assume if something happens within a subsection of a group, it's going on throughout the whole group. By that logic, all black people smoke crack and have bastard children.
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anyone else catch the irony of "expertise" writing this?

>He's one of those sideway-thinkers that assume if something
>happens within a subsection of a group, it's going on
>throughout the whole group. By that logic, all black people
>smoke crack and have bastard children.

i'm gonna quote this next time you come w/ some bigotted statement about muslims.

«SiG»
“Stand out firmly for Justice as witness before God, even against yourselves, against your kin and against your parents, against people who are rich or poor. Do not follow your inclinations or desires lest you deviate from Justice."
-Qur’an 4:135

about Muslims or any other group.
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King of the pedophiles??????

How many priests outside of this country have been accused of this???
If it isn't that many, or any at all, that is an unfair statement.

My mom is Catholic, she aint no damn pedophile.


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Honorable mention:auragin_boi
****************************************
Only after the last tree has been cut down
Only after the last fish has been caught
Only after the last river has been poisoned
Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten
Sitting Bull

This really sucks. With all of the problems the church has it needed to elect a liberal pope who was ready to make some changes. Instead they elect a 79 year old german who isnt going to change anything. Germany isnt even a catholic nation. Elect a Latin American pope, where the people of the church are found. Or a Nigerian pope that can recruit new members to the church. This pope is going to leave everything the same, and people are going to become disinfranchised and leave the church. This is a terrible move.

>This really sucks. With all of the problems the church has
>it needed to elect a liberal pope who was ready to make some
>changes. Instead they elect a 79 year old german who isnt
>going to change anything. Germany isnt even a catholic
>nation. Elect a Latin American pope, where the people of the
>church are found. Or a Nigerian pope that can recruit new
>members to the church. This pope is going to leave everything
>the same, and people are going to become disinfranchised and
>leave the church. This is a terrible move.


truth is objective and can be known, it isnt something you can just chnge on a whim to satisfy people so they wont feel bad for being a certain way or acting a ecrtain way. christianity and catholicism should stick to its guns, not cater to a group of people that are immoral.

they chose a pope that was going to maintain the status quo and he's old. They probably want someone to "fill-in" for a few years why they decide what direction they want the church to go in.

------------------------------

“The Negro pays for what he wants and begs for what he needs.” -Kelly Miller

this makes sense to me.

http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/whitenotion/

Elect a Pope who really isn't a Catholic.

Catholicism isn't a democracy; it's a practice and belief. You take away the belief, it's not Catholicism anymore.
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you said it better than i did

the most interesting thing about it to me is that all the news coverage forgets to cover that he was a nazi. and when they do cover it, they state that he fought for the german army. well if you fought for germany during world war ii, doesnt that make you a former nazi?

http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/whitenotion/

"I liked it," Gilliam said of playing gunner on punt team. "It was the first time I did anything like that. It was fun. It felt like, if he wasn't fair catching it, he was disrespecting me, so I was trying to take a head off if I could." Response-ability

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer&cid=1113704370906&p=1006953079865

Ratzinger a Nazi? Don't believe it
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sam Ser, THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 18, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

London's Sunday Times would have us believe that one of the leading contenders for the papacy is a closet Nazi. In if-only-they-knew tones, the newspaper informs readers that German-born Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was a member of the Hitler Youth during World War II and suggests that, because of this, the "panzer cardinal" would be quite a contrast to his predecessor, John Paul II.

The article also classifies Ratzinger as a "theological anti-Semite" for believing in Jesus so strongly that – gasp! – he thinks that everyone, even Jews, should accept him as the messiah.

To all this we should say, "This is news?!"
As the Sunday Times article admits, Ratzinger's membership in the Hitler Youth was not voluntary but compulsory; also admitted are the facts that the cardinal – only a teenager during the period in question – was the son of an anti-Nazi policeman, that he was given a dispensation from Hitler Youth activities because of his religious studies, and that he deserted the German army.

Ratzinger has several times gone on record on his supposedly "problematic" past. In the 1997 book Salt of the Earth, Ratzinger is asked whether he was ever in the Hitler Youth.

"At first we weren't," he says, speaking of himself and his older brother, "but when the compulsory Hitler Youth was introduced in 1941, my brother was obliged to join. I was still too young, but later as a seminarian, I was registered in the Hitler Youth. As soon as I was out of the seminary, I never went back. And that was difficult because the tuition reduction, which I really needed, was tied to proof of attendance at the Hitler Youth.

"Thank goodness there was a very understanding mathematics professor. He himself was a Nazi, but an honest man, and said to me, 'Just go once to get the document so we have it...' When he saw that I simply didn't want to, he said, 'I understand, I'll take care of it' and so I was able to stay free of it."

Ratzinger says this again in his own memoirs, printed in 1998. In his 2002 biography of the cardinal, John Allen, Jr. of the National Catholic Reporter wrote in detail about those events.

The only significant complaint that the Times makes against Ratzinger's wartime conduct is that he resisted quietly and passively, rather than having done something drastic enough to earn him a trip to a concentration camp. Of course, whenever it is said that a German failed the exceptional-resistance-to-the-Nazis test, it would behoove us all to recognize that too many Jews failed it, as well.

If he were truly a Nazi sympathizer, then it would undoubtedly have become evident during the past 60 years. Yet throughout his service in the church, Ratzinger has distinguished himself in the field of Jewish-Catholic relations.

As prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger played an instrumental role in the Vatican's revolutionary reconciliation with the Jews under John Paul II. He personally prepared Memory and Reconciliation, the 2000 document outlining the church's historical "errors" in its treatment of Jews. And as president of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Ratzinger oversaw the preparation of The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, a milestone theological explanation for the Jews' rejection of Jesus.

If that's theological anti-Semitism, then we should only be so lucky to "suffer" more of the same.

As for the Hitler Youth issue, not even Yad Vashem has considered it worthy of further investigation. Why should we?
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"I liked it," Gilliam said of playing gunner on punt team. "It was the first time I did anything like that. It was fun. It felt like, if he wasn't fair catching it, he was disrespecting me, so I was trying to take a head off if I could." Response-ability

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they said he was forced to join....

sure.

---

--------------------------------------------------------------
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Dr. Kelso: Don't you use your street lingo on me!

He said he was forced to join the hitler youths.

yeah. this article does make a lot of sense. and i admit, i was being ridiculous when i said the pope must have been a nazi. but i would think that when appointing the "holy father", the catholic church would have let this play a little heavier into their decision. granted he did desert, he still went along with the draft. i think the only adequate option, for the supposed holiest of holy people, would have been to consciencously object even if this meant death. were not talking about your average guy here, this is the infallible one himself. so yes, this doesnt make him a nazi, but it does question his character at least. but who gives any credit to the catholic church anyway.

http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/whitenotion/

the fact that he chose to fight on germany's side in ww2 is way more damning. especially when his dad was supposedly very anti-nazi.

i agree. isnt that what i said?

http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/whitenotion/

just cosigning, sorry.

No message

Hes goin to die in a few years. I know he was John Pauls buddy and everything, but i wouldnt have thought that would make a difference.

and i grew up catholic.... that shit has NO relevance with my life...

with some political influence

but whatever, keep raging against the machine.

"I liked it," Gilliam said of playing gunner on punt team. "It was the first time I did anything like that. It was fun. It felt like, if he wasn't fair catching it, he was disrespecting me, so I was trying to take a head off if I could." Response-ability

face ass lookin' dude too.
lol.
-LP

i can't believe they read my mind before i got around to posting it. oh well. unfortunately, there are so many people who actually factor things like that into their opinions on someone

spooky...


--------------------------------------------------------------
Nurse Roberts: She googled your ass.

Dr. Kelso: Don't you use your street lingo on me!

what the phuck does a white racist pedophile being named head of the catholic church have do with black people?

Q. When has joseph Ratzinger been convicted of pedophailia? thats right never...does shielding pedophiles (which i do agree is a disgusting act the church needs to stop immediatly) make you a pedophile? thats right it doesnt. White racist? Yeah if conscription into hitler youth, which he left as soon as possible (to join the priesthood) then refusal to join the nazi party with his convinced anti nazi father,then deserting the vanguard which he was conscripted into in 1945 makes you a racist. So fuck up and dont disort truth! what it has to do with black peoples already been made, in terms of conservatism yeah hes conservative and "anti marxist" but if you were head of a church would you not be against an ideology that promotes atheism?? makes sense to me like, also all these people wanting a liberal pope, i think my local insanely conservative priest made a very valid point for once in his life "Since when is the church a democracy? Also we cant go changing rules willy nilly, 2000 years of history and then aww sure whats history? some "media liberals" (i had to laugh at that though) want the church to suit them more so we just cave in? if you dont like the catholic church dont go, you should be taking more concern of your own faith than commenting on ours"

this attack-the-pope shit by so-called "open-minded" "mature" etc Okayplayer is disgusting. and the idea that "oh no, the pope is CATHOLIC?! RUN!" is absolutely idotic. if you believe God said xyz, then it is IMPOSSIBLE to DECIDE that, since xyz isn't what people are into these days, God said qrs.