The world's most powerful Cardinal lives a stone's throw from St. Peter's Square, above the terminus of the No. 64 bus, a line infamous for pickpockets. Each morning he sets off on foot at a brisk pace, crossing over cobblestones to arrive at 9 a.m. at the palazzo that once bore the title of the Roman and Universal Inquisition. Soft-spoken and courteous, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 66, looks too benign to be an inquisitor. But his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the Roman Inquisition's latest incarnation, and as the Catholic Church's chief enforcer of dogma, the Cardinal stands in direct succession to the persecutors of Galileo and the compilers of the index of banned books. The weight of history is borne in the attention Ratzinger receives. His staff, which includes some of the church's brightest men, is sensitive to every small sign of pleasure or displeasure -- a subtle glance, a pause, a bland word that has accrued special meaning over years. When he gets to his office, important documents are spread out on the desk, ready for his review. Says an associate: "He hates to be unprepared."
And he is prepared for everything, from opinions on candidates for bishoprics worldwide to subtle points of theology. Moreover, he seems prepared always to say no -- at least to Catholic liberals: no to women becoming ! priests, no to radical feminism, no to each instance of abortion, no to every incidence of premarital or extramarital sex. He has exerted his influence on a document, published last week, laying out the church's stand on interpretations of the Bible. Ratzinger sees his work as showing Catholics the proper way -- and the forbidden way. "I think there is an obligation to protect people, to help them to see this is not our faith."
The Cardinal wields immense clout in the hierarchy -- beginning at the top. The Pope and Ratzinger are, says one mid-ranking Vatican official, "two pieces of a puzzle. Without one, the other is not complete." Others point out an obvious primacy. Asked whether the Cardinal in practice was the undisputed No. 2 under the Pontiff, one insider in the Holy See responds, "Intellectually and theologically, he's No. 1."
"I wouldn't be surprised if someday he's looked upon as one of the great saints of our time," says Joseph Fessio, an American Jesuit and a former student. However, as the Pope's conservative eminence grise, the Cardinal is also one of the most despised men in Catholicism. Critics decry his hard-line ways and his apostasy from the seeming liberalism of his youth. They call the German-born prelate "Panzer Kardinal" and conjure up images of Huns and German despots. "He is very sweet -- and very dangerous," the Swiss theologian Hans Kung says. Ratzinger helped force Kung out of a professorship at the University of Tubingen for, among other things, arguing that the church -- speaking through the Pope and its bishops -- is not infallible.