The odds-makers likely had an easier time 20 years ago, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, long a loyal servant of Pope John Paul II and dean of the college of cardinals, stepped onto the balcony ...

Shortly before noon on the day that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI, I was standing in St. Peter's Square with a smart young Carmelite priest from Ireland. We were watching ...

VATICAN CITY — Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was such a close ally of Pope John Paul II that he could have easily chosen the name John Paul III. But those who expect the 78-year-old Pope Benedict XVI to ...

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany addresses the faithful as the new pope in this frame from TV, at the Vatican, Tuesday, April 19 2005. Bells chimed at St. Peter's Basilica Tuesday evening, ...

VATICAN CITY -- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, a strict doctrinal conservative who believes the church should fiercely resist the pressures of secularism, emerged from St. Peter's Basilica on ...

TRAUNSTEIN, Germany Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger alienated some Roman Catholics in Germany with his zeal enforcing church orthodoxy. But in the conservative Alpine foothills of Bavaria where he grew up, ...

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, a hard-line guardian of conservative doctrine, was elected the new pope Tuesday evening in the first conclave of the new millennium. He chose ...