RIO DE JANEIRO — Francisco Estrela asked for whom the bells of St. Peter's tolled, and he was slightly disappointed to discover that it wasn't for his countryman, Claudio Hummes.
Brazilian-born Hummes, the cardinal of Sao Paulo, was considered by many to be a strong candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II as head of the Roman Catholic Church.
But with the election Tuesday of Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, hopes among some that the College of Cardinals might give a nod to certain demographic realities in choosing the next pontiff were dashed.
"Any one of [the candidates] would be welcome," said Estrela, a porter at the Church of the Resurrection in this seaside city in the world's biggest Catholic country. "But it would have been better had it been a Brazilian."
Across the globe, messages of congratulation and declarations of relief and optimism, along with pangs of regret in some quarters, greeted the announcement of Ratzinger's elevation as the 265th pope, Benedict XVI.
Many hailed the selection of a leader they regard as cut from the same theological and spiritual cloth as the man who went before him. Known for his loyalty to John Paul and his strict enforcement of the late pontiff's teachings, Ratzinger seemed a safe pick to continue shepherding the world's 1 billion Catholics in the direction set by his predecessor and build on his legacy.
"He's fantastic," said Marian McCann, a housekeeper in Belfast, Northern Ireland, after attending a Mass in honor of the new pontiff. "It's great that we have someone who was so close to the [former] pope. He speaks so strongly about our faith, and he'll call people to the church."
Ratzinger is "one of the orthodox ones," said Buenos Aires resident Norma Tassinar, 67. "He's going to keep the church the way it's been for 2,000 years, and that's good. It's going to help us because there are a lot of people who said we had to change directions."
Other Latin Americans were less enthusiastic. Many felt that the time had come for a non-European pope, in recognition of a globalized church whose followers increasingly hailed from Latin America, Africa and other parts of the developing world.
"We had hopes for a pope from among the Latin Americans, where the majority of the world's Catholics live, so there is a little disappointment," said Roberto Rodriguez Marchena, a government spokesman in the Dominican Republic.
