Pope Benedict XVI

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany has been selected by the Roman Catholic church as the new pope. Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez of Chile made the announcement to a cheering crowd in St. Peter's Square. Ratzinger, will take the name Benedict XVI.

The announcement followed the appearance of white smoke and tolling bells signalling to the world Tuesday that 115 cardinals elected a new Pope. The crowd clapped and waved flags as the smoke began to billow over Vatican City about 5:50 p.m. (11:50 a.m. ET).

Ratzinger, 78, appeared shortly after the vote from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica to greet the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims below, who cheered his presence. "My dear brothers and sisters," he told the crowd. "After the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals elected me -- a simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord."

Pope Benedict had been dean of the College of Cardinals. In that role, he had the formal duty of announcing Pope John Paul the Second's death to foreign governments. He was appointed by John Paul as the guardian of the church's doctrinal orthodoxy in 1981.

When John Paul II gave him the task of producing the texts for the mediation of the Way of the Cross this year, Cardinal Ratzinger included criticism of the liberal elements of the Church, saying: "Often Lord, your Church seems to us to be a boat which is about to sink, a boat full of leaks."

He had been made a cardinal by Pope Paul the Sixth in 1977.