Profile: Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI has proved a less authoritarian leader than his reputation as a doctrinal hardliner led many to expect.

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - once known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition - from 1981 until his election as pontiff in 2005.

Since his election, the Vatican has been at pains to portray a softer image for man once dubbed "the Pope's enforcer" and "God's rottweiler" - but the papacy has also suffered a string of public relations disasters.

The music-loving, professorial pontiff is described by those who know him as laid back, with a mild and humble manner.

"If Benedict had not been Pope, he would have been a university professor"
John L Allen
US Vatican expert

He has a lower profile than his predecessor, John Paul II, and lacks his charisma and showmanship.

"If John Paul II had not been Pope, he would have been a movie star; if Benedict had not been Pope, he would have been a university professor," wrote US Vatican expert John L Allen.

"No surprise that John Paul took the world by storm, while Benedict stands a bit off the beaten path."

Nonetheless, Pope Benedict consistently draws crowds as large as those of the late John Paul II to his weekly audiences, and hundreds of thousands attended an open-air Mass he held in Angola in March 2009.

Poor communicator

At the age of 78, Joseph Ratzinger was the oldest cardinal to become Pope since Clement XII was elected in 1730.

The public image of a staunch defender of conservative theology was partially based on his campaign against liberation theology, the movement to involve the Church in social activism, which for him was too close to Marxism.

On sexual matters, he has described homosexuality as a tendency towards an "intrinsic moral evil" and called for pro-choice politicians to be denied Communion.

The African tour which took him to Angola was overshadowed in the West by a row over remarks he made about condoms.

En route to Cameroon, he had described HIV/Aids as "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem".

Reverberating around the world, the remarks created something of a PR disaster, the BBC's David Willey said at the time, with even some Catholic bishops expressing disagreement.

Just before the African trip, a row over the rehabilitation of a breakaway bishop, Richard Williamson, raised questions about the Vatican's communications skills.

Richard Williamson, who had been excommunicated for his ultra-traditionalist views, was brought back into the fold despite having publicly denied the Holocaust.

The German pontiff sent a strong message of solidarity to the Jews after the episode, and admitted to senior clergy that the Vatican had not checked the bishop's background thoroughly enough - but the affair reflected badly on the Vatican, months before a papal visit to the Middle East.

Our Rome correspondent asked how an organisation predicated upon the infallibility of its teaching should so consistently fail to keep its internal and external channels of communication functioning smoothly.

The lesson to be learnt, he said, was that an urgent shakeup inside the structure of internal communications and external public relations at the Vatican was needed to avoid the repetition of errors increasingly reported in the world's media as papal '"gaffes".

Against type

The Pope himself has confounded those who expected him to appoint hard-line traditionalists to key posts, choosing instead many who occupy the Church's centre ground.

A central theme of Pope Benedict's papacy has been his defence of core Christian values in the face of what he sees as moral decline across much of Europe.

Another theme is to improve the Church's relations with other religions, though there have been setbacks, particularly in regard to the Muslim faith.

In 2006, in a controversial papal speech, the Pope quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor who said the Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things.

The Vatican later denied the Pope Benedict had intended to offend Muslims.

Benedict has also spoken out against human rights abuses in China while quietly working to re-establish full diplomatic relations with the country.

He has condemned the "continual slaughter" in Iraq and the "catastrophic" situation in Darfur, and called for more urgency in protecting the environment and fighting the "scandal" of poverty.

Formative experiences

Joseph Ratzinger was born into a traditional Bavarian farming family in 1927, although his father was a policeman.

The eighth German to become Pope, he speaks many languages and is said to be an accomplished pianist with a special fondness for Beethoven.

At the age of 14, he joined the Hitler Youth, as was required of young Germans of the time, but was not an enthusiastic member.

His studies at Traunstein seminary were interrupted during World War II when he was drafted into an anti-aircraft unit in Munich.

He deserted the German army towards the end of the war and was briefly held as a prisoner of war by the Allies in 1945.

Supporters say his experiences under the Nazi regime convinced him that the Church had to stand up for truth and freedom.

The Pope's conservative, traditionalist views were intensified by his experiences during the liberal 1960s.

He taught at the University of Bonn from 1959 and in 1966 took a chair in dogmatic theology at the University of Tuebingen.

However, he was appalled at the prevalence of Marxism among his students.

One incident in particular at Tuebingen, in which student protesters disrupted one of his lectures, seems to have particularly upset him.

In his view, religion was being subordinated to a political ideology that he considered "tyrannical, brutal and cruel".

"That experience made it clear to me that the abuse of faith had to be resisted precisely," he later wrote.

In 1969 he moved to Regensburg University in his native Bavaria - where he would return as Pope to make his controversial remarks on Islam in September 2006 - and eventually rose to become its dean and vice-president.

He was named Cardinal of Munich by Pope Paul VI in 1977.

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