The Catholic Church under Benedict and John Paul II has been exemplary in defending tradition against the erosions of the modern world.
The fact that the last two popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, were not from Italy showed the "internationalization" of the papacy, he said.
Since he replaced Pope John Paul II, Benedict has made repeated calls for religious tolerance and freedom in Islamic countries - most notably in his 2006 speech at Regensberg where he quoted a Byzantine emperor from the Middle Ages criticizing Islam for seeking to spread its message by the sword.
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John Paul II, who preceded Benedict, was the first pontiff to use the Internet, and the 20th century saw a string of other milestones for popes using technology to reach the masses.
Pope Benedict's predecessor Pope John Paul II, who died on 2 April, was the first pope to visit a synagogue and the Nazi concentration camps.
Both leaders looked back to the visit by the late Pope John Paul II 14 years ago, which Pope Benedict said "was like a gentle breeze that gave new strength to the Church in Cuba".
Sixty-seven of these were appointed by Benedict XVI, and 50 by his predecessor John Paul II.
Benedict's predecessor, the widely popular John Paul II, made a number of changes to the voting process in 1996 to make it less taxing on the cardinals.
Sixty-seven of the electors were appointed by Benedict XVI, and the remainder by his predecessor John Paul II.
Of the 115 electors, 60% were picked by Benedict XVI, and the rest by his predecessor John Paul II.
Pope Benedict never garnered the media savvy of his predecessor John Paul II, a former actor with a knack for defusing controversy with one-liners.
Despite becoming the first pope to use Twitter, Pope Benedict never garnered the media savvy of his predecessor John Paul II, a former actor with a knack for defusing controversy with one liners.
Unlike John Paul II, who decided to stay in the job, Benedict is offering a different model.
His cause for beatification was started by John Paul II, and he was the first person beatified by Pope Benedict.
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There are several papal contenders in the wings, but no obvious front-runner as was the case when Benedict was elected pontiff in 2005 after the death of Pope John Paul II.
With his resignation, Pope Benedict has chosen a starkly different path than his predecessor, John Paul II, whose long struggle with Parkinson's disease played out before eyes of the world before his death in 2005.
Crowds accustomed to a quarter-century of superstar John Paul II, grew to embrace the soft-spoken, scholarly Benedict, who had an uncanny knack for being able to absorb different points of view and pull them together in a coherent whole.
Since his election as Pope seven years ago, Benedict has consistently tried to correct what he regards as a misinterpretation of Vatican II, insisting that it did not mark a revolutionary break from the past, as liberal Catholics would have it, but rather a renewal of the best traditions of the ancient Church.
Throughout the trip, Benedict has paid tribute to his predecessor, Poland's favorite son, John Paul II, and his goal has been to exhort the inhabitants of Europe's most devoutly Catholic country to show the rest of the continent how to build a society based on Christian values.
Observers are going to watch closely to see whether Pope Benedict has the same impact on the world's young Catholics as did his predecessor John Paul II.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, secretary of state to the late John Paul II, is trying to sideline Bertone and put one of his own proteges in place before Benedict dies, he said.
Francis also raised traditional eyebrows when he refused the golden pectoral cross offered to him right after his election by Monsignor Guido Marini, the Vatican's liturgy guru who under Benedict became the symbol of Benedict's effort to restore the Gregorian chant and heavy silk brocaded vestments of the pre-Vatican II liturgy to papal Masses.
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