POPE BENEDICT XVI: HIS LIFE & MISSION

The Election of Cardenal Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy shocks some and delights others. He is both an ardient intellectual and a driven traditionalist charged with leading a divided Catholic Church into a new era. In Pope Benedict XVI, bestselling author Stephen Mansfield tells the story of a youth who grew up in Nazi Germany and went from being a liberal theological assocuated with Vatican II to a theological conservative who became Pope John Paul's closest ally. As a cardinal, the new pope persued a firmly traditional path in the last quarter century: He excommunicated radical priests, cracked down on Marxist liberation theology in Latin America, and shaped some of John Paul's more socially conservative positions. The new Pope is - acording to some - the ultimate insider, whose election ensures that the revolution of John Paul will be rendered permanent in the early part of our century. Pope Benedic XVI examines the new pope specifically from the perspective of a non-Catholic - A committed Christian - without fealty to Rome. Mansfield's academic depth, his poetic but widely accessible writing style, and his ability to take complex religious ideas and make them undertandable to the non-religious, lend his treatment of Pope Benedict XVI significance for reader of all philosophies and faiths.