Leaders welcome Pope, liberals dismayed

John O’Callaghan, Manila

The conservative German cardinal, chosen by his peers on Tuesday, was generally seen as the voice of continuity after he served as one of Pope John Paul II’s closest aides and the guardian of Church doctrine for nearly a quarter of a century.

“I believe this is going to be a reign of peace for all religions,” Lorenzo Gallegos, a Filipino doctor, said after Mass at a Manila church. “This has been in the scriptures.”

President Bush called Ratzinger “a man of great wisdom and knowledge”.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he would bring a wealth of experience to his papacy.

The election of the first German Pope in 1,000 years “fills us in Germany with special joy and also with a little pride”, President Horst Koehler said.

Jewish and Muslim leaders expected Ratzinger, 78, to follow John Paul’s lead in trying to heal divisions between faiths. But there was disappointment among those who had hoped a new Pope might relax the Church’s views on issues such as divorce, female priests, homosexuality and contraception.

“Ratzinger is not the Pope that we would ideally like,” said Joelle Battestini, associate convener of the Australian group Ordination of Catholic Women.

Matt Foreman of National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in the US said the German cleric had shown “unrelenting, venomous hatred for gay people”.

Others doubted that Ratzinger could a heal a Church riven with disillusion and tarnished by sex abuse scandals. Bernd Goehring, director of German ecumenical group Kirche von Unten, described the election as a catastrophe. “We can expect no reform from him in the coming years. Even more people will turn their back on the Church.”

Mary Grant of US group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said the Pope “seems to prefer combativeness to compromise and compassion”.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head of the world’s 70 million Anglicans, praised him as a theologian of “great stature” and looked forward to working with him.

“Cardinal Ratzinger already has shown a profound commitment to advancing Catholic-Jewish relations,” said Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s international director of interreligious affairs.

In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, a senior figure in the 40-million-member Islamic group Nadhlatul Ulama hoped that Ratzinger’s close ties to the late Pope would mean greater harmony for the world’s religions.

“He has been dealing with theological issues for quite a long time and he is very familiar with the visions brought by Pope John Paul II,” said Masduki Baidlowi.

Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, an Islamic cleric in Pakistan and deputy parliamentary leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance of Islamic parties, said Ratzinger must address worries among Muslims that the US-led war on terrorism was a crusade. “We hope he will try so that the anti-American sentiment, which is prevailing in the Muslim world, does not degenerate into a clash between religions,” he said.

Church leaders in the Philippines, Asia’s largest Catholic country, had made no secret of wanting the new Pope to stay the conservative course of John Paul, who commanded the deep affection of millions of Filipinos after his two visits.

Still, concern lingered about the Vatican’s relationship with the faithful elsewhere in the region.

Brother Mani Mekkunnel, national secretary of the Conference of Religious India, said the Vatican never fully appreciated the inter-faith dialogue the Church in his country initiated.

In 2000, Ratzinger branded other Christian churches deficient, calling Lutherans “absurd” when they complained. In Latin America, which had hoped one of its own would be elected Pope this time, the choice may be seen as divisive. Ratzinger had disciplined Latin American priests who backed Marxist-influenced “liberation theology” to fight against social injustice and military regimes in the 1970s and 1980s.