After sliding smoothly into his job as pastor of his flock, reaching out to dissidents, other faiths and countries long hostile to the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI has started drawing the line.With his 80th birthday and the second anniversary of his election as pope approaching this month, he has rebuffed calls — including by bishops in his native Germany — to let divorced Catholics who remarry participate fully in the Church.
He has warned Catholic politicians who must decide on such issues as abortion, euthanasia and marriage that Catholic values are "not negotiable."
And he has closed the door on any relaxation of the celibacy requirement for priests.
Benedict's persistent defense of the "traditional family" based on marriage between a man and a woman has emboldened Italy's bishops, who are waging a fierce battle against the government's proposal to extend some rights to non-married couples, including same-sex unions.
One of the pope's prime targets for a rekindling of the faith is Europe, which he recently described as "going down a road which could lead it to take its leave from history."
Having already lost a battle in predominantly Catholic Spain, which went as far as approving gay marriage, Benedict has now turned his sights on his own backyard.
The debate has been particularly shrill in Italy, where the pope's words — he is also bishop of Rome — have immediate impact in the media. After Italians voted down a Vatican-backed attempt to overturn Italy's liberal abortion law in 1981, Pope John Paul basically kept out of Italian politics.
Enrique Miret Magdalena, a respected moderate Spanish theologian who is himself 93, said Benedict is "an old man, and the papacy weighs heavily upon him. He's afraid of change."
As Benedict approached the April 19 anniversary date of his succession to Pope John Paul II, the Vatican took the unusual step of setting down the fundamental principles of Benedict's papacy.
A speech given by its No. 2 official and longtime Benedict aide Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to an audience of industrialists in Milan listed the fight against relativism and Benedict's vision of a Europe "that must not only be an economic and political reality but must draw from its spiritual foundations." It cited the need for a "Christian identity" that contrasts with "widespread secularism."
"Benedict has made no objective change in his positions," said Italian church historian Giuseppe Alberigo, insisting there was nothing "unexpected" although he expressed surprise by the furor over the proposed Italian law.
"Bishops in Spain would have been overjoyed," he said, noting Spain endorsed gay marriage while the Italian government proposal stops short of that.
Benedict's easy if somewhat shy manner with crowds, projecting the air of a university professor genuinely surprised at the multitudes flocking to his doorstep for his lectures, contrasted sharply with the image of a dour theologian in a Vatican office.
Among his early visitors was a leading dissident and former university colleague, the liberal theologian Hans Kueng, who fell from grace under John Paul.
Benedict, who turns 80 on April 16, also disciplined the founder of the conservative Legionaries of Christ, a John Paul protege who for decades has been dogged by sexual abuse allegations.
Before becoming pope, Benedict had complained about the "filth" in the church, seen as a reference to priestly sex abuse.
Before a trip to Germany in September Benedict told a German television interview that "Christianity, Catholicism isn't a collection of prohibitions."
But in March he issued a 131-page "exhortation" to ensure that bishops, priests and the world's 1.2 billion faithful strictly follow church teaching.
It included a nostalgic note about Latin, which has been in sharply declining use since the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.
He suggested that the faithful be taught to recite the more common prayers in Latin.
The pope is scheduled to visit Brazil in May to make a major policy address to bishops from across Latin America.
The Vatican set the stage for the trip with its censure of a prominent champion of liberation theology in the region, condemning some of his works as "erroneous or dangerous."
It was Benedict's first such action as pope, but as the Vatican's chief guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy for more than two decades he disciplined a number of theologians.
In September, he will resume his European travels with a pilgrimage to Austria, where Catholics have been traditionally wary of directives from Rome.
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