Zadar (IKA) – Following the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new Pope on Tuesday, April 19, the vice president of the Croatian Conference of Bishops, Archbishop Ivan Prenđa, expressed his great joy that the Church had a new Pope. He was pleased at the speed of the election and the concord of the cardinals who had elected the Holy Father, “which speaks of the awareness of the need for the new Pope to assume the leadership of the Church immediately that Pope John Paul II led so successfully for twenty-seven years.” Archbishop Prenđa is of the opinion that Benedict XVI will continue the work of John Paul II. “He is exceptionally well acquainted with his thoughts and works. He was beside him for 25 years as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Like the previous Pope, he is exceptionally well acquainted with the problems of the Church, the problems and needs of the world. I believe that this will greatly facilitate his continuation of the John Paul II’s works,” said Archbishop Prenđa, adding that Cardinal Ratzinger was a great theologian, profound thinker and exceptionally well acquainted with contemporary thought. “These are moments from which it will be possible to set off, to continue the work of the previous Pope and initiate dialogue with the world that he knows exceptionally well,” stated Archbishop Prenđa, who has known Cardinal Ratzinger since the 1980s as the Archbishop of Munich, and, as the head of the seminary, had received him in his home. “We spoke then about the conditions in which the Church lives. He had a lively interest in the state of the Church under the communist system, generally in Europe, in the East, and particularly in the former state. He was also interested in the life of the Church regarding spiritual callings. When I worked at the seminary, I was able to bear witness to him about how our Church lives and what steps it undertook in its efforts during those times to act and fulfill its mission.”

Asked to comment on the fact that the new Pope comes from Germany, at a time when Europe, particularly Germany, has distanced itself from living practical Christianity, Archbishop Prenđa said: “We Catholics, believers, believe that God is He who guides human history and that the election of Benedict XVI is an act of the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit, who leads the Church, desired and now has such a person at the helm of the Church, a person who is specifically from Western Europe. Europe, which is enduring the consequences of secularization, has obtained from its being, from Western culture, a Pope who understands it from the inside, who knows what secularization is and what its consequences are. I believe that he knows the remedy for this secularization. I believe that this Pope will be a Pope of even more profound evangelization, that he will continue his predecessor’s work in that respect. This means that he will renew the Church from the inside, which will be especially felt by Western Europe, including Germany.”