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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2006
On April 19, 2005, after just four rounds of voting, the College of Cardinals announced that 78-year-old Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had been selected as the new pope. This announcement startled many. To be sure, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for nearly a quarter of a century Ratzinger had helped select the vast majority of the cardinals who gathered to choose a successor to John Paul II, so his selection as pope could be seen as fulfillment of a simple quid pro quo. Even so, it had been widely speculated that Ratzinger's conservative beliefs would spark passionate opposition among the electors and that his age and reputed poor health would also work against him (Novak 2005).