Benedict XVI in perspective

In March 2005, when it became clear that Pope John Paul II would soon die, Boris Johnson asked me to write a piece for The Spectator predicting who would be chosen as the next pope. With no special insight into the minds of the cardinals, I ran through the possibilities that had been mentioned in the press — an African such as the Nigerian Cardinal Arinze, a South American such as Cardinal Claudio Hummes, a Frenchman such as Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris — but concluded that the best candidate would be the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger.

At the time it seemed unlikely that he would be chosen. His role as the guardian of orthodoxy had made him unpopular with liberal Catholics and Anglicans who favoured intercommunion. He was the bête noir of progressive secularists for his strictures on condoms and Liberation Theology; and, aged 77, he was thought too old.