QUOTES OF THE WEEK

Saturday April 23rd 2005

"After the great John Paul II, the Cardinals elected me, a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord."

Benedict XVI on the balcony in St Peter's Square, just minutes after being elected Pope

"We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognise anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires."
Pope Benedict XVI on the day before his election
"The election of Ratzinger is a catastrophe."
Bernd Goehring of the German ecumenical group, Church from Below
"This is truly a tragic moment, that one who has been so vitriolic and so firm in persecuting those with whom he does not agree, should be elected Pope."
Senator David Norris
"I had hoped that he would be spared. I could only cry on hearing the news."
Georg Ratzinger, the new Pope's brother