White smoke signals pope election

[4me2]

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=629 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD colSpan=3>White smoke signals pope election



</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=416><!-- S BO --><!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD> All eyes are on the chimney leading from the Sistine Chapel



</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->White smoke has been seen from the Sistine Chapel chimney indicating that a new pope has been elected.


The bells of St Peter's Basilica rang out shortly after 1800 local time (1600 GMT) to confirm the news.

There were jubilant scenes in St Peter's Square where many thousands of pilgrims had gathered. The new pontiff was chosen on the fourth ballot held by the 115 cardinals meeting to select a successor to Pope John Paul II. More details soon.<!-- E BO -->



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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4462077.stm

[4me2]

Disgusted ! after the catholic church turning a blind eye to Adolf attrocities under the nazi regime they have the gaul to make a German the new pope. :nono

Only consolation is hes already 78 so he wont be serving 26 years.

[diablos]

Is it the guy i picked ages ago click here for thread..


This guys been in the hitler youth so in many ways he may be perfect..


Swing to Ratzinger boosts chance of becoming Pope
By Bruce Johnston in Rome
(Filed: 13/04/2005)

A late upsurge in support for Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger days before next week's conclave has boosted the chances of the Vatican's doctrinal chief becoming the next Pope.

The German-born cardinal, feared by liberal Catholics as a dour enforcer of orthodoxy, won over many sceptics with the touching, human tone of his sermon at the funeral of Pope John Paul II, often described as his alter ego.


Forthright opinions: Cardinal Ratzinger
His supporters even pointed out that he looked the part of a Pope during last Friday's service.

The momentum in favour of the Bavarian is so marked that Spanish cardinals have reportedly voiced concern that at 78 he may be too old a Pope for their public at home to accept.

His supporters argued that Cardinal Ratzinger was the best candidate "to pick up the broom" and sweep away the mess of a church in such disarray that an American cardinal disgraced by the paedophilia scandals said Mass for the Pope in St Peter's on Monday.

Cardinal Ratzinger, the dean of the college of cardinals, made his uncompromising views on the state of the church clear in comments made only days before the last Pope's death.

In a Good Friday homily, he wrote: "Lord, often your Church seems to be about to sink, and to be a boat full of holes... The face and clothing of your Church shock us. But it is we who are sullying it."

Such forthright opinions have impressed the Ratzinger lobby, but his rivals will use them as more evidence of his grimly ideological stance.

The conventional wisdom that "he who enters a conclave as a Pope comes out as a cardinal" will also work against him.

But the biggest barrier to his election as Pope is still his divisive record as the arch-conservative guardian of Vatican orthodoxy.

"He has too many enemies due to his heavy-handed, centralised and arrogant approach to theology," said one Vatican insider, while admitting that otherwise he had "all the requisites for the job".

According to one Italian news****r, "for many [in the Church] he is not welcome".

It quoted a friend of the cardinal's as saying: "In order to try to push him out of the race, someone has been spreading rumours that he belonged to Nazi organisations.

"Like all German children at the time, he was in the Hitler Youth. He's admitted it himself in a book. But he was hardly more than a child, since he was just 12 years old."

It was also revealed yesterday that the failing health of other cardinals is being used as an argument to sideline certain candidates when voting begins in the conclave on Monday.

"Depression, sudden changes of mood, heart or orthopaedic ailments" are on the list of shortcomings circulating in the Vatican, according to one observer.

He added that one cardinal had been marked down because he was said to "wear a surgical corset and has difficulties walking".

[ABCMan]

hopefully given his enforced long distant past he wont be an apeaser

[cronus71]

Wednesday April 20, 1:36 AM
New pope served in Hitler Youth but was not a Nazi

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Joseph Ratzinger, elected Roman Catholic pope on Tuesday, served in the Hitler Youth during World War Two when membership was compulsory, according to his autobiography.

But he was never a member of the Nazi party and his family opposed Adolf Hitler's regime, biographers have said.

Ratzinger's experiences during World War Two have been a source of controversy in some newspapers which probed the German pope's past after Pope John Paul died and he quickly became a frontrunner to succeed the deceased pontiff.

In his autobiography "Milestone: Memoirs: 1927-1977", Ratzinger said he and his brother Georg were both enrolled in the Hitler Youth when membership was obligatory.

Founded in 1922 and based in Ratzinger's native region of Bavaria, the Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organisation of the Nazi Party. It was disbanded in 1923 but re-established in 1926, a year after the Nazi Party was recognised.

Members of the Hitler Youth wore uniforms resembling those of the Nazi Party.

"Neither Ratzinger nor any member of his family was a National Socialist," John Allen wrote in a biography of Ratzinger entitled "Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith".

Allen quoted Ratzinger, who was born in 1927, as saying his father's criticism of the Nazis forced the family to move home four times.

"As a seminarian, he was briefly enrolled in the Hitler Youth in the early 1940s, though he was never a member of the Nazi party," Allen, a Vatican specialist, wrote in an article published in National Catholic Reporter in 1999.

"In 1943 he was conscripted into an anti-aircraft unit guarding a BMW plant outside Munich," wrote Allen.

U.S. POW

Allen said Ratzinger was later sent to Austria's border with Hungary to erect tank traps. "After being shipped back to Bavaria, he deserted. When the war ended, he was an American prisoner of war," he said.

Allen said that under Hitler, "Ratzinger says he watched the Nazis twist and distort the truth. Their lies about Jews, about genetics, were more than academic exercises. People died by the millions because of them."

Peter Seewald, a German journalist who published a book-length interview with Ratzinger in 1996 entitled "Salt of the Earth", said the German "clearly saw Hitler and the Third Reich as the enemy" to both family and Church.

Ratzinger's father "saw that a victory of Hitler would not be a victory for Germany but a victory of the Antichrist," Seewald's U.S. publisher, Ignatius Press, wrote in a summary of Seewald's book.

"In 1943 while still in seminary, he was drafted at age 16 into the German anti-aircraft corps," Ignatius said. "Though he was opposed to the Nazis, he was forced to join at a young age."

Ratzinger trained in the German infantry but a subsequent illness kept him from doing "the usual rigours of military duty", Ignatius said.

"As the Allied front drew closer to his post in 1945, he escaped from the Nazis and returned to his family's home in Traunstein, just as American troops established their headquarters in the Ratzinger household," Ignatius said.

It said he was put in a U.S. prisoner of war camp but released a few months later at the end of the war in 1945.

Source: http://in.news.yahoo.com/050419/137/2kugm.html

[xdir]

Why all this discussion about the Pope being German?
Does it matter that the new Pope was a member of Hitlers youth?? how many germans did not join the Hitler Youth in the Nazi era.
Why bring up the war every time Germany/Germans do some thing, Why can't Briton move on after WW2, its 60 odd years since its end.

[diablos]

Why all this discussion about the Pope being German?
Does it matter that the new Pope was a member of Hitlers youth?? how many germans did not join the Hitler Youth in the Nazi era.
Why bring up the war every time Germany/Germans do some thing, Why can't Briton move on after WW2, its 60 odd years since its end.

I think its a good thing the pope is a hun, and as for being in the hitler youth its just perfect to run a sectarian based faith..

ethnic cleansing will soon follow will fit in well with the apartheid schoolling system..

the Holy Fuhrer has a nice ring to it..

zieg heil el papa..

[ABCMan]

Why all this discussion about the Pope being German?
Does it matter that the new Pope was a member of Hitlers youth?? how many germans did not join the Hitler Youth in the Nazi era.
Why bring up the war every time Germany/Germans do some thing, Why can't Briton move on after WW2, its 60 odd years since its end.

thats about it, ignoring diablos stupid and pointless reply the simple fact is that as a child all the germans were forced to join the hitler youth it wasnt optional if you wanted to live.

as to the anti german feeling, well it is a little pointless (except maybe in football, thats only 39 years ), however the control of the EU by germany and france is something which is of concern to many and could be something that causes anti german feeling, however none of that has anything to do with the pope.