She’d probably still win for pith. Who but historians familiar with the likes of Sergius III (904-11) — his mistress Marozia the Theophylact bore him an illegitimate son whom she later appointed as John XI (931-36) — would question the shock value? But international newspapers, if not the usual scaredy-pants American ones when it comes to the Roman Catholic Church, gave Parker a run for her money last month.
‘White Smoke, Black Past,’ trumpeted the headline in Israel’s Yediot Aharonot. ‘From Hitler Youth to … Papa Ratzi’ roared London’s Sun, indelicately describing Cardinal Ratzinger as an ‘ex-World War II enemy soldier.’ German papers proved harshest on his doctrinal present and personality. ‘Ratzinger is the Counter-Reformation personified,’ asserted the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Berliner Zeitung described his hold on the Vatican as ‘autocratic, authoritarian,’ deeming the new pope ‘as shrewd as a serpent.’ Die Tageszeitung described him as a ‘reactionary churchman’ who ‘will try to seal the bulkheads of the Holy Roman Church from the modern world…'” (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
