Uniting all Christians is a huge task

In the short time since his election as Pope Benedict XVI, there have been strong expressions of opinion about the new Pontiff from an unusually wide range of people.

Some have depicted him as the "Panzer Cardinal", a hard line enforcer for the late Pope John Paul II who silenced more than a hundred theologians.

Yet a great many of those who have been talking about Cardinal Ratzinger have depicted him as a very accessible individual.