Editorial: Benedict XVI
On April 19 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected in the conclave of 2005 to be the 265th pope. He promptly chose for his name Benedict XVI. He later explained that he picked the name Benedict to link his pontificate to that of Benedict XV, who guided the church during the First World War. Like that Benedict, the new pope would seek to be an advocate for world peace and reconciliation. The contrast with the previous conclave of 1978 was striking. ... ( full text)

A New School Comes to Spanish Harlem by George M. Anderson
They came from all over, some 220 parents and children, and waited in line for up to three hours to enter the century-old red brick building in East Harlem. In this once Italian neighborhood, they were now mostly Hispanic immigrants from all over Central and Latin America and the Carribean. What the parents sought in this hulking building was the fulfillment of a dream: a new kind of Catholic high school that would shepherd their children into college ... ( full text)

Jesuit History: A New Hot Topic by John W. O’Malley
Historians are a cautious lot and do not use the word revolution lightly. But that is the right word to describe what has been happening in the study of the history of the Society of Jesus. The scene is so different now from what it was as recently as a dozen years ago that it is hardly recognizable. All at once the Jesuits have become a hot topic—indeed, one of the hottest—in the field of early modern history. Of course revolutions do not spring ... ( full text)

The Obedient Patient by Kevin M. Cahill
Shortly after a Vatican and hospital medical team completed emergency abdominal surgery on Pope John Paul II following an assassination attempt on May 13, 1981, they asked six international specialists to come to Rome as consultants. Two of those invited were from the United States, Harvard’s professor of surgery Claude E. Welch (now deceased) and I. The consultants met with the Italian doctors, examined the patient, reviewed the hospital records ... ( full text)