Cardinal Ratzinger to be conclave `kingmaker' after election as dean

BY LUKE COPPEN
POPE JOHN Paul II has confirmed the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as dean of the College of Cardinals.
The appointment ensures that the German cardinal will play a critical role during the next papal election. It is the dean's duty to inform the world of the death of a pope and to take over the running of the Church until a successor is elected.
The 75-year-old cardinal, who has held the post of prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith since 1981, was elected dean last week by five fellow Vatican cardinals. The Pope announced at the weekend that he had approved the decision. Cardinal Ratzinger succeeds Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, who stood down earlier this year, aged 80, so he could retire to his native Benin in West Africa.
The dean of the College of Cardinals is one of the most prestigious positions in the Catholic Church. He is considered the "first among equals" by members of the college and is entrusted with important ceremonial duties.
But it is only after the death of a pope that the dean is called upon to exercise his full responsibilities.
The dean is charged with informing the world's cardinals, heads of state and ambassadors to the Vatican of the pope's death. He then summons the cardinals to Rome and presides over the funeral liturgy of the pope. Between 15 and 20 days after the death of a pope, the dean is the first cardinal to enter the conclave to elect a new pontiff, and he reads the conclave oath to the others.
Once someone receives the votes necessary to be elected, it is the dean who asks the newly elected pope if he will accept the position and by what name he will choose to be known.
Cardinal Ratzinger was in Murcia, Spain, when the Pope John Paul H confirmed his appointment as dean. He was presiding over a congress on "Christ: Way, Truth and Life" at the city's Catholic University of St. Anthony.
In the keynote address, the cardinal launched a fierce assault on cultural relativism. He said it had become a cliché for pundits to say that no one faith possessed the full truth.
"Are these people really searching, or is it that they do not wish to find the truth, because what they will find should not be?" he asked.
"Isn't it arrogant to say that God cannot give us the gift of truth? Is it not contempt for God to say that we have been born blind and that truth is not our concern?
"The only thing that we can do is to recognise with humility that we are unworthy messengers who do not proclaim ourselves, but who speak with holy fear of what is not ours, but of what comes from God," he said.