In Germany, mood is hardly one of celebration

Liberal Germany reacted with a collective sigh of dismay yesterday to the news of Cardinal Ratzinger's election as the first German pope for more than 400 years.

Liberal Germany reacted with a collective sigh of dismay yesterday to the news of Cardinal Ratzinger's election as the first German pope for more than 400 years.

The son of a rural police officer in Bavaria, Cardinal Ratzinger is renowned in his home country as a vigorous defender of Catholic orthodoxy who is strongly opposed to the ordination of women, contraception and homosexuality.

Admired by conservatives, he is feared by their more liberal counterparts, who have called him "the enforcer " and "the panzer cardinal" because of his unflinching commitment to conservative doctrine. Cologne's Rundschau newspaper remarked shortly after yesterday's announcement that "certainly no other German churchman divides opinion more.

"Most of his critics are to be found in Germany and they are his fiercest," the paper went on. "For many in Germany the man with the ice-grey hair is simply a symbol of religious dogma and conservatism."

An opinion polllast week showed that 36 per cent of Germans opposed his becoming Pope whereas only 29 per cent supported him.

Frederike Sittler, a religion correspondent for German radio, said: "Many Germans will be swallowing hard and asking themselves how they should respond to his election. He is renowned as a representative of the cold and dismissive side of Rome."

Ratzinger's past includes brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a German anti-aircraft unit. However, he was never involved in Nazi atrocities, and joined the Hitler Youth only after membership was made compulsory in 1941. Two years later he was enrolled in an anti-aircraft battalion that protected a BMW factory whose workforce included slave labourers from Dachau concentration camp.

The pontiff has insisted he never took part in combat and said he never fired a shot because one of his fingers was badly infected. He was later sent to Hungary where he was obliged to set up tank traps. While there he saw Jews being deported to the death camps.

He is on record as saying that while he was opposed to the Nazi regime, any open resistance would have been futile.

Following in their footsteps

Joseph Ratzinger has joined an elite band of fewer than a dozen Germans to be elected pope.

Among the first of the German pontiffs was Pope Gregory V, who was elected in May 996 at the age of 24. After crowning his 16-year-old cousin Otto III as Holy Roman Emperor, Gregory V ruled for three years before dying under suspicious circumstances.

Another Holy Roman Emperor, Henry III, subsequently nominated a string of German noblemen for the papacy, most of whom died in similarly suspicious circumstances. The longest-serving was Pope Leo IX, from the Upper Alsace, who reigned from 1049 until in 1054.

Adrian VI, born in the Netherlands (then part of Germany), reigned from 1522 to 1523 and was the first Pope of the Counter-Reformation.

Danielle Demetriou