Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam.

Reuters' "gracious" announcement reads:

German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the strict defender of Catholic orthodoxy for the past 23 years, was elected Pope on Tuesday despite a widespread assumption he was too old and divisive to win election.

Widespread among whom? The left-liberal elites that Reuters reporters hang out with?

He took the name Benedict XVI, a cardinal announced to crowds in St. Peter's Square after white smoke from the Vatican's Sistine Chapel chimney and the pealing of bells from St. Peter's Basilica announced that a new pope had been chosen.

I had guessed that Ratzinger would take the name Boniface if chosen, since as the first German pope in almost a millennium he might want to honor the Apostle to the Germans. In any case, the media are already speculating as to the signal the new Holy Father intended to send by his choice of names; e.g., ABC:

... it could be interpreted as a bid to soften his image as the Vatican's doctrinal hard-liner. Benedict XV, who reigned from 1914 to 1922, was a moderate following Pius X, who had implemented a sharp crackdown against doctrinal "modernism."

I must rush off to class. More thoughts later over on my personal blog.