No Vatican Shake-Up For Now

Pope Benedict XVI confirmed Cardinal Angelo Sodano in the Vatican's No. 2 post Thursday and kept all other top officials, avoiding any immediate shakeup in the late John Paul II's administration.

It was an unexpected move by the new pope, reports CBS News Correspondent Sabina Castelfranco. The move is considered a sign that Pope Benedict XVI wants to maintain continuity in the church after Pope John Paul II.

Sodano, the Vatican's secretary of state, is 77, already two years past the normal retirement age for Vatican officials. The new pope is 78.

One appointment Benedict will have to make is his successor as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's guardian of orthodoxy.

Among names that have surfaced as possible successors are Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Austria and Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.

The Vatican announcement Thursday also said the pope confirmed the Holy See's foreign minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo of Italy, as well as the undersecretary of state, Archbishop Leonardo Sandri of Argentina, who had become John Paul's official voice when the late pontiff could no longer speak.

The confirmation of Sodano came a day after Benedict gave his first Mass at the Vatican as pope, pledging to keep reaching out to other religions and leaving no doubt that he senses the large shadow of his predecessor.

"I seem to feel his strong hand holding mine, I feel I can see his smiling eyes and hear his words, at this moment particularly directed at me: 'Be not afraid,'" said Benedict, who until Tuesday was simply Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

While signaling that he wants to tread in John Paul's ideological footsteps, the 78-year-old pope is a contrast in style to his predecessor, who was 20 years younger when he became pontiff and kept up a grueling global travel schedule even as his health ebbed.

John Paul II, who died April 2, acted, played soccer, went canoeing in mountain streams as a young man in Poland. Benedict is mostly an indoor man, though he is a big walker because of his youth in the Bavarian Alps. He finds relaxation in classical music and likes to play the piano, not take to the stage.

But Benedict took his cue from John Paul when he pledged Wednesday to work for unity among Christians and to seek "an open and sincere dialogue" with other faiths.

He also stressed he would draw on the work of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meeting that modernized the church, an issue important to liberals who are wary of Benedict from his time as the powerful enforcer of church doctrine.

"He's got a reputation as a staunch conservative -- but if his first two days in office are anything to go by, Pope Benedict is trying to soften that image, saying he'll continue to follow guidance laid out by the Second Vatican Council, which set to modernize the Catholic Church," said CBS News Correspondent Charlie D'Agata.

Benedict will be fighting that reputation close to home as he tackles one of the biggest challenges: a Europe of empty churches and growing secularism.

And as the world's 1.1 billion Catholics got first hints of where the papacy is headed, followers of other religions weighed the future of interfaith relations. By and large, reactions were hopeful and expectant — an indication of the new standards in reaching out that John Paul set during his 26-year papacy.

"I think he has been very open, so I have no worries about the ecumenical route," said British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. "It will continue. No doubt at all."

But the new pope has been one of the most forceful Vatican voices for Catholic missionary work and other forms of evangelization. He was the intellectual force behind the 2000 document "Dominus Iesus," which outlined the Catholic Church as an exclusive road to salvation and angered Protestants, Jews, Muslims and other non-Christians.

In Israel, admiration for John Paul's tireless efforts to promote Jewish-Catholic reconciliation mixed with unease about Benedict's time in the Hitler Youth as a teenager.

John Paul won many Israeli hearts during a trip to the Holy Land in 2000 by apologizing for Roman Catholic wrongdoing over the centuries. He also was praised for promoting interfaith dialogue, establishing diplomatic relations with Israel and aiding Polish Jews during the Nazi era.

"Israel can certainly coexist with him," Oded Ben-Hor, Israel's ambassador to the Vatican, said of the new pope. "But the real test will come over the course of time."

Benedict inherits sometimes testy relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, which has accused Catholics of poaching Orthodox believers. John Paul, the first Slavic pope, saw a visit to Russia as a way to promote greater Christian unity a millennium after the east-west schism, but he never was able to arrange the trip.

"We very much hope that under the new pope those problems will be solved," said Igor Vyzhanov, an Orthodox church spokesman.

Benedict's election was welcomed across the Islamic world, where many people hope he will promote harmony between the two religions and possibly Middle East peace.

The new pope won praise from Muslims by criticizing Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for comments in 2001 that Western civilization is superior to Islam. "One cannot speak of the superiority of one culture over another, because history has shown that a society can change from one age to another," he said at the time.

But Benedict has objected mostly Muslim Turkey's bid to join the European Union, viewing it out of line with the continent's Christian traditions.

John Paul was the first pope to visit a mosque, urged religious tolerance, spoke out against the U.S.-led war in Iraq and called for a peaceful end to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"The late pope took brilliant and daring stands, and we hope the new pope would follow his example," said Sheik Salah Keftaro, a prominent Syrian cleric who accompanied John Paul on his historic visit to Damascus' Omayyad Mosque in May 2001.