Conservative, German

The world's press pounced on perhaps the only two facts most knew about Joseph Ratzinger and stressed either one or the other in coverage yesterday of his election as Pope Benedict XVI.

Talk of the "Panzer Cardinal" or "God's Rottweiler", the "enforcer" of dogma under John Paul II, was marked in strongly Catholic countries, where the new Pontiff's word carries weight.

Others - not least somewhat dazed commentators in his homeland - seized on the novelty of the first German Pope in a 1,000 years, a former conscript in Hitler's army taking a leading role in the world 60 years after the defeat of Nazism.

In mainly Protestant northern Europe, Ratzinger's life story attracted great attention: "From Hitler Youth to Holy See", splashed Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad on its front page.

In Italy, backyard of the Roman papacy, left-wing La Repubblica called him "A Warrior To Challenge Modernity".

"An apostle of orthodoxy," concluded Venezuela's El Nacional, reflecting disappointment in Latin America, home to half the world's billion Catholics, at yet another Pope from Europe with little sympathy for reformists in the Americas.

From his native Bavaria, though, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung said he was no "monster" and might be surprisingly flexible.

That hope was taken up by the Sun-Times in Chicago, one of the bastions of US Catholicism: "Just as John Paul II surprised us in becoming a force in the world with his extensive travels, the new Pope may have surprises in store in going from a Vatican insider to carrying a message of universality to the Church's 1.1 billion members... We can only wish him Godspeed."

Catholic Austria's Die Presse wrote: "For European and North American Catholics in particular, the new Pope is a symbol of dogmatic rigidity."

"There is no reason to expect any change of course for the Church when it comes to matters like birth control, priestly celibacy or homosexuality," said The New York Times.

Leftist Mexican daily La Jornada recalled the new Pope's past as a persecutor of radical "liberation theology" priests in Latin America.

"Ratzinger, however, lacks that charismatic personality. He is dry and hard, as the infinite number of Catholic clergymen and theologians persecuted mercilessly by the German cardinal know well."

"Confronting growing secularisation and loss of face in the European heartlands of Catholicism will be clear priorities," wrote the Irish Times in Catholic Dublin. "But if these issues are tackled by empowering conservative movements and organisations against modernist and reformist Catholics, Pope Benedict will deepen rather than heal divisions in his Church."

Belgium's Le Soir warned of the risk of "schism". That the Pope is German elicited earnest praise - Croatia's Jutarnji List, hailing a "watershed in global politics", said: "Choosing Cardinal Ratzinger, a German and former soldier in Hitler's army, the Catholic Church has made a strong symbolic contribution to removing the German people's historic guilt."

It also prompted snappier headlines in European papers not slow to remind Germans of past failings: Britain's Sun, over a photograph of the new Pontiff greeting the masses and the media, punned: "From Hitler Youth to... PAPA RATZI". It did later point out he was "forced into" the Nazi youth movement as a teenager.

The paper's mass-selling German equivalent unsurprisingly took a different, if similarly nationalistic, line: "We Are The Pope!" screamed Bild, published in Protestant northern Germany.

Below the headlines, there was room for more nuanced comment on the prospects for the papacy that follows the historic 26-year rule of the Polish Pontiff, John Paul II.

Italy's La Stampa said: "It would be too easy and misleading to see in the German Pontiff... only a stubborn conservative, a restorer of medieval dogmas, a lone knight of an unjustifiably restrictive catechism which punishes Western secularism."

Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, from Catholic Munich where Benedict was once archbishop, said: "Joseph Ratzinger is a conservative with whom one can have one's differences but he's not a sort of universal monster. Again and again he has been a surprise and broken through the image of the Panzer Cardinal."

Some focused on Benedict's advanced age as a factor in his election: "The cardinals do not want another long pontificate; Ratzinger is 78," said Protestant Sweden's Dagens Nyheter.

Switzerland's Tagesanzeiger welcomed him with the headline: "A German Transitional Pope."

In Poland, still mourning the death of his predecessor, Ratzinger's would be "a continuation of John Paul's papacy", in the eyes of Rzeczpospolita, while Israelis also saw a continuity of his forerunner's quest for reconciliation with Jews: "New Pope seen continuing relations with Israel, Jews," said Haaretz.

Less happy were editorialists in Turkey, which Ratzinger angered by speaking out against it becoming the first mainly Muslim member state of the European Union: "The new Pope is against Turkey," said the liberal daily Radikal in a headline.

The gay press lamented his hard line against homosexuality; Henk Krok, editor of Dutch magazine Gay Krant, said: "The white smoke from the Vatican was black for many homosexuals."