Last German pope: Hadrian VI. (1522-1523), born in Utrecht, now Netherlands, but thence part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

Ratzinger is no fundamentalist, but a traditionalist. Dr. M. Luther was a fundamentalist (the Holy Scripture only!

One of our former leading conservative politicians, Dr. Heiner Geissler, recently publicly deplored the exclusion of women in the Catholic hierarchy. Half of the population excluded! He postulated that the Cath. Church had to solve this problem soon, but methinks with the new bishop of Rome nothing will move.

But who cares? My family is Lutheran since the Reformation.