Habemus Papal

He's widely seen the Vatican's enforcer, an authoritarian hardliner on church doctrine who excommunicates theologians with controversial ideas and opposes any modernization in the church.

But Joseph Ratzinger of Bavaria, now the new Pope, Benedict XVI, also is widely described by those who know him as a modest, gentle man with a shy smile, a large intellect and a ready handshake.

And the man who appeared on a balcony yesterday with a beam so bright it lit up the whole Square of St. Peter hardly looked like the Vatican's feared hatchet man.

"I think it would be wise for everyone to check their conceptions of Cardinal Ratzinger at the door because all bets are now off," said Vatican expert Rocco Palmo.

"In his job [as the Church's doctrinal watchdog] he became a controversial figure," Palmo added, "but the 'Panzer cardinal' is not going to become the 'Panzer Papa.'"

The two sides of Ratzinger were on display to the world this week.

First, he choked up during his elegant, eloquent eulogy for John Paul II. Then he delivered such a fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist rant to the cardinals that many thought he had killed his chances to ever don the papal mitre.

Ratzinger and John Paul shared the same conservative views, but their public styles couldn't be more different.

Ratzinger biographer John Allen has explained it this way: "John Paul II plays the part of Ronald Reagan to Ratzinger's Pat Buchanan."

Because of his thick German accent when speaking Italian, his severe enforcement of dogma and his onetime membership in the Hitler Youth, Ratzinger has often been unfairly lampooned as a Nazi.

But he has strong fans among Jewish leaders, who say he was behind John Paul's unprecedented efforts to reconcile with Jews.

"He is the architect of the ideological policy to recognize, to have full relations, with Israel," said Rabbi Israel Singer, chairman of the World Jewish Congress.

Born in 1927 in Marktl am Inn, Germany, Ratzinger's parents were named Joseph and Mary. He was a rural cop and she was a cook.

Ratzinger entered a seminary in the city of Traunstein at the age of 12, was conscripted into an anti-aircraft battery in the last months of the war and then returned to the seminary. He was ordained in 1951 and taught theology for years.

Ironically, Ratzinger was a liberal reformer when he served in 1962 as a consultant during Vatican II to Cardinal Frings of Cologne. The 1968 student revolutions turned him into a staunch conservative, and he has bemoaned Vatican II's changes in the liturgy.

In 1977, Ratzinger was appointed bishop of Munich and was elevated to cardinal three months later.

John Paul II named him head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981, where he was responsible for enforcing Catholic orthodoxy as Catholics in Europe and America began calling for women priests, birth control, gay rights and other modernisms.

The new Pope plays piano daily, is devoted to Mozart, speaks six languages, including English, and is well-known to the Vatican press corps and church leaders around the world.

"It would be hard to find a Catholic controversy in the past 20 years that did not somehow involve Joseph Ratzinger," Allen wrote.

"He is very sweet - and very dangerous," Swiss theologian Hans Kung once said, after Ratzinger had Kung - his onetime mentor - forced out of a professorship for questioning the infallibility of the Pope.

Ratzinger has made headlines for ordering books destroyed and excommunicating theologians who strayed from what he considers the true faith.

But he also helped draft John Paul's extraordinary 1998 apology for the Catholic Church's historical failings and misdeeds.

Until his elevation to Pope, Ratzinger lived in a small apartment just outside one of the Vatican gates, walking to work unnoticed every day through the crowds of tourists milling in St. Peter's square.

Many who have met him remark on his humble demeanor. the Rev. Patrick Ryan of Blessed Sacrament Church in Paterson, N.J., was visiting the Vatican in 1999 when he asked what he thought was another priest for directions to a tomb.

The priest took Ryan there, and as he brushed away the dirt and vines, Ryan saw a flash of red beneath his long black overcoat - and realized it was no ordinary priest.

"You are Cardinal Ratzinger!," Ryan recalled saying yesterday. "He answered a simple, 'Yes.'

"He was a very humble priest who was helping someone who was lost."

Hitler Youth dogged his career

By HELEN KENNEDY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Joseph Ratzinger's past membership in the Hitler Youth has dogged his whole career.

It's a bad rap.

The son of a rural cop in Germany, Ratzinger was 6 when Hitler came to power in 1933. Ratzinger has said his father was a critic of the Nazis and the family had to move four times before he was 10.

When he was 14, his school signed him up in the Hitler Youth when membership became compulsory but he soon managed to bow out because of his enrollment in seminary.

"Ratzinger was only briefly a member of the Hitler Youth and not an enthusiastic one," biographer John Allen wrote.

At 16, he was drafted into a Nazi anti-aircraft unit, along with many other boys who were too young to be sent to the front.

He went to Munich where he defended a BMW plant that used workers sent from the Dachau concentration camp.

Ratzinger deserted as the war was ending in April 1945 and went home to Traunstein. After avoiding being shot by the Germans, he was then taken captive by the Americans, spending several weeks as a POW before being reunited with his parents and brothers.

American Jewish leaders largely praised Ratzinger yesterday as a key figure in improved Catholic-Jewish relations and said there is no Nazi taint.

"The new Pope, like his predecessor, was deeply influenced by the events of World War II," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. "He grew up in an anti-Nazi family. Nonetheless he was forced to join the Hitler Youth movement."

And "all his life Cardinal Ratzinger has atoned for the fact," said Anti-Defamation League President Abe Foxman.

Oh, and he's a best-selling author

He's not just the new leader of the world's 1 billion Catholics - he's also suddenly a best-selling author.

Demand for former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's many books skyrocketed yesterday after he became Pope Benedict XVI.

"We're being overwhelmed with orders," said Anthony Ryan, director of marketing for his English-language publisher, Ignatius Press.

The new pontiff has written more than 30 books, and a translation of the second volume of his memoirs is currently in the works.

Several of the titles hit Amazon's best seller list within hours of the announcement yesterday, and some volumes were sold out by afternoon.