Peter Ford and Sophie Arie

Moving rapidly to assuage fears that he would turn the Roman Catholic Church inward, Joseph Ratzinger pledged in his first sermon as Pope Benedict XVI Wednesday to reach out to believers of all faiths and none, promising to “continue ... sincere dialogue with them.”

His “primary task” would be to “reconstitute the full and visible unity of all Christ’s followers,” he said in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. Observers inside and outside the church wonder how the man who enforced orthodox doctrine for 24 years will do this. He has balked at the prospect of Muslim-majority Turkey joining the European Union, and wrote that other Christian churches “suffer from defects.”

Supporters welcome a global figure unwilling to water down his faith. Others see his election as widening the global religious “red-blue” divide between conservative moral absolutists and liberals of all faiths who say religion must be more inclusive. In his last homily as a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI said that “We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognise anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.” Benedict has dismissed anyone who tried to find “feminist” meanings in the Bible, and last year told American bishops it was appropriate to deny Communion to those who support abortion and euthanasia. The new pope’s choice of the name Benedict, harking back to the saint who helped Christianise Europe in the sixth century, suggests that he sees his role as reinforcing the faith on an increasingly secular continent, the hearth of Christianity where the ashes appear to be cooling.

Against the dominantly secular and relativist mood in Europe, Benedict seems likely to present

a firm Catholic conviction, rooted in a starkly black-and-white view of the world. That view is likely to clash with mainstream European thinking over many issues widely regarded here

as human rights: birth control, gay unions, women’s rights, euthanasia, and stem cell

research, all areas where European governments tend more and more to ignore Catholic teaching. In a speech earlier this month in St. Benedict’s hometown of Subiaco, in Italy, then Cardinal Ratzinger bemoaned a Europe that he said “constitutes the most radical contradiction

not only of Christianity, but also of religious and moral traditions of all humanity.” Some analysts wonder whether a man like that is best placed to relate easily with people of other faiths, or with the non-believers he would like to convert - especially since by his own admission he lacks the charisma of his predecessor, John Paul II. Others suggest he may not try, and will concentrate instead on shoring up the faith of those within the church.

Secular activists in Europe are worried. “Conservatives and hard-liners in the church will have been given a boost” by Cardinal Ratzinger’s election as pope, says Graham Watson, leader of the Liberal group in the European Parliament. “We can expect them to be more militant now. It’s going to be even more important to build a secular force to drive that agenda forward.”

Equally worried are Muslims, who had been encouraged by John Paul II’s outreach to Islam, symbolised by the kiss he planted on a copy of the Koran during a visit to a mosque in Damascus in 2001. The views the new pope has expressed in the past, however, suggest that he is not willing to deal with members of other faiths as equals. — The Christian Science Monitor