Joseph Ratzinger

Joseph Ratzinger, elected Pope yesterday, is clear heir to the legacy of Pope John Paul II after serving as the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog since 1981.

Under the 78-year-old German's meek demeanour lies a steely intellect ready to dissect theological works for their dogmatic purity and debate fiercely against dissenters.

His traditionalist judgments have delighted fellow conservatives but outraged some liberal Catholics and members of other faiths.

The first German Pope for some 1,000 years, Cardinal Ratzinger served in the Hitler Youth during World War II when membership was compulsory. He was never a member of the Nazi party and his family opposed Adolf Hitler's regime, biographers have said.

Cardinal Ratzinger first gained attention as a liberal theological adviser at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). However, the Marxism and atheism of the 1968 student protests across Europe prompted him to become more conservative in order to defend the faith against growing secularism.

After stints as a leading theology professor and then archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Ratzinger was appointed head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the successor office to the Inquisition, in 1981.

He and Pope John Paul agreed that traditionally sound doctrine and theology had to be restored in the Church after a period of experimentation.

In the CDF office, Cardinal Ratzinger first turned his attention to the "liberation theology" popular in Latin America, and drew criticism for his severity in ordering the one-year silencing in 1985 of Brazilian friar Leonardo Boff, whose writings were attacked for using Marxist ideas.

Cardinal Ratzinger, whose aides say is supremely self-confident, issued a firm Vatican denunciation of homosexuality and gay marriage in 1986. He brought pressure in the 1990s against theologians, mostly in Asia, who saw non-Christian religions as part of God's plan for humanity.

A 2004 document sternly denounced "radical feminism" as an ideology that undermined the family and obscured the natural differences between men and women.

His combative side came out in 2000 in a dispute over a CDF document entitled Dominus Iesus. Aimed at restating the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church against the more inclusive views in Asia, it branded other Christian denominations as deficient or not quite real churches.

Anglican, Lutheran and other Protestant Churches which had been in ecumenical dialogue with Rome for years were shocked. They were further upset when Cardinal Ratzinger dismissed protests from Lutherans as "absurd".

Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee however yesterday praised him for having shown a "profound commitment to advancing Catholic-Jewish relations".

The son of a police chief, he was born in Marktl am Inn in Bavaria in 1927 and as a schoolboy was compulsorily enrolled in the Hitler Youth during World War II.

"Neither Ratzinger nor any member of his family was a National Socialist," John Allen wrote in a biography of Cardinal Ratzinger.

Cardinal Ratzinger, however, seems only to have grown in authority and influence in recent years.

In 2002, he became dean of the College of Cardinals which has elected him pontiff. He gave a widely praised homily at Pope John Paul's funeral.

There has been praise among US Catholics for Cardinal Ratzinger's handling of the American sex abuse scandals.

"I think most people feel Cardinal Ratzinger's office first of all acted with extraordinary speed by Vatican standards in turning around some 700 cases in a matter of months," said John Allen, Cardinal Ratzinger's biographer.

The cardinal's critics have accused him of cutting short internal discussion on topics such as married priests, birth control, sexuality, and the role of women in the Church.