[Photo Left: Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI ] The Vatican announced the name of John Paul II’s successor Tuesday evening, shortly after white smoke billowed out of a Vatican chimney, indicating the election of the first new pope of the third millennium. The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany by a two-third majority came in a fourth round of voting that begun when the 115 cardinals sequestered themselves into the Sistine Chapel late Monday for their conclave. “Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, a longtime guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy, was elected the new pope Tuesday evening in the first conclave of the new millennium. He chose the name Pope Benedict XVI,” the Associated Press reported.

Ratzinger, the first German pope in centuries, served John Paul II since 1981 as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As the 265th pontiff in the Church's 2,000-year history, Ratzinger now has difficult task of filling the void left by John Paul II – the third longest-reigning pontiff in the Church's history, who died Apr. 2 at the age of 84 – and guiding the Catholic Church’s 1.1 billion followers into a new era fraught with moral dilemmas and dissension over a host of issues ranging from emptying pews to contraception and

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