The Man Who Would Be Ratzinger

When he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI was known as the hard-line enforcer of church doctrine for John Paul II. But the man the new Pontiff has just named to fill his old job, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is harder to pin down.

San Francisco Archbishop William J. Levada is, for one thing, the first American ever to reach such an influential position in the Roman Catholic hierarchy. A native of Long Beach, California, who headed the diocese in Portland, Oregon, before moving to San Francisco in 1995, he is known for his diplomatic skills, which temper his conservative positions on most doctrinal issues. For example, though a vocal opponent of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s flurry of gay weddings last year, Levada had earlier worked out a Solomonic solution that resulted in health benefits for gay partners. He has been criticized for his slow and secretive response to priest sexual-abuse scandals in San Francisco, where at least 68 lawsuits over alleged abuse are still pending. Father Patrick Brennan, vicar at the Archdiocese of Portland, admits that Levada “had his detractors” but praises his warmth and intelligence. “He’s not an academic theologian,” Brennan says. “He’s a practical theologian.”

That practical streak may mean Pope Benedict XVI expects Levada, 68, to pay more attention to the administrative demands of his new job than to the ideological ones. A traditionalist inside the Roman Curia was initially shocked at the choice. “He’s not at all the darling of the right,” he said. But Vatican sources say the appointment was a sign of the trust and respect Benedict has for the American prelate, whom he has known since Levada served under him in Rome at the Congregation in the early 1980s. “For this job,” says a well-placed Vatican official, “he wanted to have someone he can rely on.” With Benedict expected to remain the church’s theologian in chief, Levada may be the key to putting the Pope’s ideas into practice.