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EXULTANT: Seminarians cheer as their new spiritual leader speaks at the Vatican

The New Shepherd
	It's hard to follow a superstar; will the new Pope with the fierce reputation be able to take up where John Paul II left off?
	By NANCY GIBBS

Posted Sunday, April 24, 2005
Pope Benedict XVI thinks the church is like a symphony orchestra. Both abide by strict rules designed to promote both majesty and mystery. Both have many parts but one glorious message; many players but one leader they all must follow. And like a Pope, a conductor is applauded before he lifts the baton.

Even though Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger had been proclaimed the front runner, Pope John Paul II's strong right hand, he was an introvert, bookish, had always been able to walk from his apartment to the Vatican without attracting much notice. But that would all change just three days after his 78th birthday, when the papal conclave's fourth ballot gave him the two-thirds vote of the Cardinals needed to become the 265th Pope. Crowds milled in St. Peter's Square, watching the tin chimney, waiting for the white smoke that would signal a choice had been made. Inside the Sistine Chapel the Cardinals wrestled with the stove in the corner just left of the entrance.

"They were trying to get enough chemicals on the fire to make the smoke white," recalls Chicago's Francis Cardinal George. "The stove backed up, pouring smoke into the chapel." Outside, when the first tendrils appeared, they were gray and vague. But in time they whitened, and then the bells pealed, and people came running into the square from all directions to hear the news, "Habemus Papam!" We have a Pope! And then the transformation began.

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