Less than an hour after white smoke billowed out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez emerged to say, "I announce to you with great joy ... we have a Pope."  While thousands cheered in St. Peter's Square the curtains parted and the man who entered the conclave as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, emerged as Pope Benedict XVI.  Ratzinger, who served as Pope John Paul II's chief theological advisor for 20 years, is the 265th pope selected to lead the Catholic Church's 1.1 billion followers. Ratzinger's election made headlines around the world.

Ratzinger in forceful call for conservative path"

In a sermon intended to set the tone for the next papal election, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger delivered a stinging critique of modern culture, calling upon the church to wield Jesus Christ as a shield against a "dictatorship of relativism."

Standing before a semicircle of his peers and a massive audience of rank and file faithful, Ratzinger asked: "How many winds of doctrine have we known in the last ten years? How many ideological currents, how many fashions of thought?"

"Having a clear faith based on the creed of the church, is often labeled as fundamentalism. Meanwhile relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching, looks like the only attitude acceptable to modern standards."

Ratzinger's sermon came hours before he and 114 of his fellow cardinals were to enter the Sistine Chapel and begin the conclave.

His sermon depicted the church as a "little boat of Christian thought" tossed by waves of "extreme" schools of modern thought, which he identified as Marxism, liberalism, libertinism, collectivism and "radical individualism." Other dangers to the faith included "a vague religious mysticism," "new sects," and materialism.

"All men want to leave a trace behind," he said. "But what remains? Not money. Buildings won't remain; neither will books," he said.

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires," he told the cardinals, urging them to promote a "maturity of Christ" to protect the church from modern influence.

"Christ is the real measure of humanism. 'Adult' isn't a faith that follows waves of fashion. Adulthood and maturity are a faith profoundly rooted in friendship with Christ," he said.

Ratzinger Named Pope Benedict XVI

"Born in Bavaria in 1927, Ratzinger is a police officer's son who grew up in a farming family. The Nazi military drafted him during World War II, and he later deserted—a crime punishable by death. In the 1970s he served as a top university administrator before being named Cardinal of Munich in 1977. Since 1981 he has been the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which is charged with promoting and safeguarding the church's policies on faith and morals."

Pope Benedict XVI: Profile

Pope Benedict has consistently pursued doctrine that can endure, independent of cultural or social trends. He argues that only with a completely separate values system can the Church offer individual freedom. His critics call this "papal fundamentalism", but the Pope is unflappable in his personal theology.

He has claimed that "everything falls apart without truth". It is now his role to unite the Catholic Church under his strong, principled vision.

Pope Benedict XVI, the first German to be elected to the Pontificate in centuries, assumes leadership of the Roman Catholic Church at a time when Europeans grapple with forces that require fresh examination of the role of religion in the public square.

Christian Science Monitor - Part 1 of 3: What place for God in Europe?

Across Europe, the conflicting currents of secularism, Christianity, and Islam are compelling Europeans to wrestle with their values as never before. In this first installment of a three-part series, the Monitor examines the forces that are shaping European identity - and explores why the Continent is debating what role, if any, religion should play in public life.

Christian Science Monitor - Part 2 of 3: In a secular ocean, waves of spirituality

But in the shadow of such shocking events are signs of a quieter and less divisive return of religion and spirituality to European lives. "God is back among intellectuals," says Aleksander Smolar, a leading European thinker who heads the Stefan Batory Foundation in Warsaw and teaches at the Sorbonne in Paris. "You can feel there is a problem of soul in Europe; people are conscious of a void and there is a certain crisis of secularism."

Christian Science Monitor - Part 3 of 3: Europe's rising class of believers: Muslims

Being religious at all, however, is unusual in European life. Though Muslims make up only 3 percent of the British population, more people attend Friday prayers than go to Sunday church, a recent survey found.

That scares many Europeans who fear that Europe could soon lose its Christian identity.

Send your letter to the editor to feedback@tothesource.org.