Pope Benedict: A New Era Begins

Giving his homily in Latin and outlining the priorities for his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI Wednesday celebrated his first public Mass since being elected the 265th leader of the Catholic Church.

Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said his "primary task" would be to work to reunify all Christians and that sentiment alone was not enough. "Concrete acts that enter souls and move consciences are needed," he said.

The new pope said he wanted to continue "an open and sincere dialogue" with other religions and would do everything in his power to improve the ecumenical cause.

The message was clearly designed to show that Benedict was intent on following many of the groundbreaking paths charted by John Paul, who had made reaching out to other religions and trying to heal the 1,000-year-old schism in Christianity a hallmark of his pontificate.

The formal installation ceremony for Benedict will be on Sunday.

Ratzinger chose the name Benedict XVI and called himself "a simple, humble worker." Benedict is one of the more frequent name choices made by pontiffs. The last Benedict, XV, was viewed as a moderate; the name comes from the Latin word for "blessing."

Tuesday, Ratzinger - the first German pope in centuries - emerged onto the balcony of St. Peter's, where he waved to a wildly cheering crowd of tens of thousands and gave his first blessing.

"Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me - a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord," he said after being introduced by Chilean Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estivez.

Ratzinger, a rigorously conservative guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy who turned 78 on Saturday and was chosen the Catholic Church's 265th pontiff Tuesday, went into the Vatican conclave a leading candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II.

CBS News Correspondent John Roberts reports the selection of Ratzinger, in one of the shortest conclaves in a century, is a choice that defied the conventional wisdom. Ratzinger was the favorite going in - but the church's top enforcer was seen as far too controversial to be elected Pope.

"He could be a wedge rather than a unifier for the church," said the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit weekly magazine America.

This was clear in St. Peter's Square moments after the announcement that Ratzinger had been selected. While there were cheers and deafening applause, there were also groans and pockets of stunned silence.

When the white smoke appeared and then the church bells rang, signaling the election of the new pope, Niels Hendrich, 40, of Hamburg, Germany, jumped up and down and shouted, "Habemus papam!" - Latin for "We have a pope!"

But he gave only three halfhearted claps when he learned who it was.

"I am not happy about this at all," he said. "Ratzinger will put the brakes on all the progressive movements in the church that I support."

"He was known as the enforcer, and this certainly means that that will probably be a continuing theme, much to the disturbance of some of the more liberal elements in the Catholic Church," reports WCBS-AM's Rich Lamb, a veteran Church-watcher.

"He served for 20 years as John Paul's chief theological adviser," said Lamb. "He cracked down on a number of things that would be considered liberal - liberation theology, religious pluralism, challenges to traditional moral teachings."

CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips reports that Ratzinger's reputation as "uncompromising" - his backers say - is undeserved.

"He himself is absolutely not the iron-fisted enforcer, arch-Conservative that he's depicted as being," Father Richard Neuhaus of the Religious Public Policy Institute told Phillips.

"He's a man of deep faith," said Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago on CBS News' The Early Show. "But more than that, he's a man with a sense of history... There is a keen sense at this time of the historical challenges to civilization and to the Catholic Church, particularly in the west."

Benedict XVI is the first German pope in nearly 1,000 years and nowhere are the celebrations more enthusiastic than in Germany.

In Traunstein, students at St. Michael's seminary pumped their hands in the air, and the schools director was in tears.

"I'm completely overwhelmed. I can't fathom what happened," Rev. Thomas Frauenlob said. "He eats with us. I can't grasp it. I know he's going to do a really good job."

But the pope's rigorous fundamentalism worries many in Germany who have issues with the German church that are familiar to Americans, reports CBS News Correspondent Sheila MacVicar. These include dwindling attendance, too few priests and a great divide between the teachings of the church and people's lives.

Unlike many previous popes, who were unknowns to the world and certainly to most ordinary Catholics before their election, Ratzinger has been in the public eye for decades, speaking and writing on many topics.

The day before he became pope, Ratzinger used his homily at the papal conclave to warn the faithful about tendencies that he considers dangerous: sects, ideologies like Marxism, liberalism, atheism, agnosticism and "moral relativism" - the ideology that there are no absolute truths.

World War II was a defining experience for Ratzinger, who wrote about those years in his memoirs.

He and his brother enrolled in the Hitler Youth when that became compulsory, but was soon allowed to drop out because of his studies for the priesthood. Two years later, he was drafted into a Nazi anti-aircraft unit as a helper, a common fate for teenage boys too young to be soldiers.

"We are certain that he will continue on the path of reconciliation between Christians and Jews that John Paul II began," Paul Spiegel, head of Germany's main Jewish organization, told The Associated Press.

Benedict faces different issues than his predecessor: the need for dialogue with Islam, the divisions between the wealthy north and the poor south as well as problems within his own church.