NEW HAMPSHIRE
Nashua Telegraph
By ALBERT McKEON, Telegraph Staff
mckeona@telegraph-nh.com
Published: Wednesday, Apr. 20, 2005
The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the Roman Catholic Church’s 265th pope surprised some of the faithful in this state.
Some were caught off guard by the very fact that the College of Cardinals reached a consensus only one day after starting the voting conclave to appoint a successor to Pope John Paul II. ...
“He was a reformer at Vatican II, but he certainly changed his outlook,” Merrimack resident Carolyn Disco said of Ratzinger’s participation in the church’s ecumenical council that called for change.
Disco disapproves of Benedict’s view of the abuse crisis. She cited Ratzinger’s 1999 dismissal of a canon law petition against an alleged abusive priest, filed by eight former members of the Legion of Christ religious order.
“The hierarchy has become more irrelevant to my faith,” she said. “I have to find it elsewhere. I have to create my own niches, my own spiritual life.”
Disco’s discomfort with Benedict differed from the welcome forwarded to the new pope by Bishop John McCormack, leader of the state’s Catholic Church.