The New Pope, in His Own Words

Statements by former cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, who on Tuesday became Pope Benedict XVI.

On his election

"After the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in the Lord's vineyard."

-- His first address as pope

Role of the church

"We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires. . . The church needs to withstand the tides of trends and the latest novelties. . . . We must become mature in this adult faith, we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith."

-- At a Mass at St. Peter's Basilica before the conclave of cardinals

"How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to Him. How much pride, how much self-sufficiency."

-- At a Good Friday Mass in 2005, seen by many as a statement about the clergy sex abuse scandal

Europe's role in the church

"In the hour of its greatest success, Europe seems to have become empty inside, paralyzed by a life-threatening crisis to its health and dependent on transplants."

-- In a newly published book "Values in Times of Upheaval"

Role of men and women

"The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes has enormous consequences on a variety of levels. This theory of the human person, intended to promote prospects for equality of women through liberation from biological determinism, has in reality inspired ideologies which, for example, call into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and make homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality."