The Pope

Pope Benedict XVI

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At 6:43 p.m. (12:43 p.m. Eastern) on Tuesday April 19, 2005, the Proto-Deacon of the College of Cardinals, Jorge Arturo Cardinal Medina Estévez, came onto the Loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica and announced:

“Dear brothers and sisters. I announce to you a great joy. We have a Pope. The Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord, Lord Joseph, Cardinal of Holy Roman Church, Ratzinger, who has taken the name Benedict XVI.”

“To put it another way: love, in the true sense, is not always a matter of giving way, being soft, and just acting nice. In that sense, a sugar-coated Jesus or a God who agrees to everything and is never anything but nice and friendly is no more than a caricature of real love. Because God loves us, because he wants us to grow into truth, he must necessarily make demands on us and must also correct us. God has to do those things we refer to in the image of “the wrath of God,” that is, he has to resist us in our attempts to fall away from our own best selves and when we pose a threat to ourselves.”

- God and the World, “Love: The Meaning of Life”