VATICAN CITY — It was an odd pairing: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's watchdog of orthodoxy, sat down for breakfast Tuesday next to Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, one of the most progressive U.S. prelates.
Given their sometimes conflicting approaches, the two men might not have ended up next to each other had a protocol officer been present. But Mahony said in an interview that he came away from the encounter -- and from two days of secret meetings in the Sistine Chapel -- convinced that Ratzinger would show a far more pastoral side of himself as pope than he had in his years as enforcer of doctrine.
"I think what you're going to see and hear is a very pastoral, spiritual dimension," Mahony said. "Remember, he's no longer the chief theologian of the church in that same sense.... He is the chief theologian as being pope."
Ratzinger's choice of the name Benedict XVI, Mahony said, is an indication that promoting peace in the world and reconciliation among peoples and faiths will be priorities.
After Ratzinger was elected, Mahony said, the new pope was asked what name he had chosen.
"He said, 'I'm going to take Benedict XVI,' but then went on to explain why, which is very interesting," Mahony said.
His first reason was that his namesake, Pope Benedict XV, reigned from 1914 to 1922 during World War I. "It was the worst scourge of war ever known on the face of the Earth" at the time, Mahony said.
"So he said we still need to be working at peacemaking, reconciliation and harmony around the world," Mahony said.
The second reason offered by Ratzinger was that St. Benedict, who founded the Benedictine Order, said that "Jesus Christ is first and foremost. Everything else is secondary. [Ratzinger] said those are the reasons [he] chose the name."
At breakfast Tuesday, Mahony said, Ratzinger inquired about the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, as well as those of the other prelates present.
"He's someone that you could walk into a Starbucks [with] and sit down and have a coffee with and be totally at ease," Mahony said. "He's just delightful."
Two days ago, in a Sunday homily at St. Peter's Basilica, Ratzinger had sharply denounced what he called a "dictatorship of relativism." He spoke out against radical individualism, atheism, shallow mysticism and "libertinism."
Mahony would be unlikely to support any of the social phenomena denounced by Ratzinger.
