Pope Benedict XVI is the most divisive figure in the Catholic Church, writes Patsy McGarry.
Analysis: Last night in St Peter's Square following the announcement of the election of Pope Benedict XVI and his blessing of the city and the world, there was a story circulating of a man in the crowd who, on hearing who the new Pope was, just sat down and wept openly there in the square for his church and its future.
A text received almost immediately the announcement was made on my own mobile phone predicted the end of the Catholic Church in Ireland and the developed world.
Among sections of the crowd at St Peter's there was also deep shock, mainly among older people. Through widespread discussion over the previous two days it had been generally agreed that Cardinal Ratzinger's candidature had been disposed of in the first ballot on Monday, when it was generally assumed he had been honoured with what was believed would be a vote of thanks, before the electors moved on to the real business of the conclave yesterday.
Indeed a new pope was not expected to be elected until today.That the election took place on the fourth ballot was a great surprise, but that the man so handsomely endorsed was Cardinal Ratzinger has set off reverberations which will be felt within and without the Catholic church for as many years as he is Pope at least.
There can be no doubt that, as of now, there is no more divisive figure within Catholicism. His appeal is to a rigidly orthodox view of doctrine and practice which, in its apparent tendency to exclusivity, seems almost opposite to the general understanding of what the word "catholic" itself means.
Some have suggested in the past that St Paul particularly would have great difficulty with this understanding of a church.
As prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since the 1981, Pope Benedict XVI systematically moved the church to a position which is not now all that far from where it stood on many matters prior to the Second Vatican Council. He has helped force the closure of so many of the windows thrown open by Pope John XXIII.
It has become a 21st-century church looking back nostalgically while attempting to create a virtual 1950s.
Where ecumenism with reformed churches is concerned, there was no movement of significance while he was at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Rather, in the brash phraseology that has marked his style, and as he said in his Dominus Jesus document of 2000, they were not churches "in the proper sense" but merely "ecclesiastical communities".
However, this did not stop him actively interfering in the acrimonious debate about gay clergy in Anglicanism by sending a letter of support to those endorsing the status quo banning such clergy at a meeting in the southern US during the summer of 2003; an interference so rare by a churchman of any denomination in another ecclesiastical community's internal affairs that it caused great offence.
There will be despair today within many Anglican circles at his election. Where Jews are concerned there will also be a deep unease.
In the same Dominus Jesus document he described all other faiths as "gravely deficient", notwithstanding the wonderful fact that in March of that year (Dominus Jesus was published at the end of August 2000), Pope John Paul had prayed as a Jew at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
On celibacy, women priests or women in the diaconate, the new Pope is immovable. Similarly on the use of condoms to combat the Aids virus. And on homosexuality he has been particularly virulent, describing it as "intrinsically evil" and "objectively disordered".
Where involvement of bishops in decision-making is concerned he has been scathing in his dismissal, while he has refused to acknowledge the clerical sex abuse crisis in the church as other than another symptom of Western decadence.
On all the major and critical issues facing the Catholic Church in today's world he is forcefully against change of any sort.
Then there was his treatment of dissidents and former colleagues, including theologian Hans Küng, also a "child" of Tübingen University like himself.
No wonder that Catholic man wept in St Peter's Square yesterday. Indeed Benedict's history and image can accurately be summarised in just one word: "No".
The election of Benedict XVI was not simply a vote by the cardinal electors in endorsement of Pope John Paul's legacy, it has represented a further closing of the door in the face of a troubled world.