Pope Benedict begins eighth year

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI began his eighth year as pope yesterday after spending the waning days of his seventh driving home his view of the Catholic Church, with a divisive crackdown on dissenters and an equally divisive opening to a fringe group of traditionalists.

The coming year may see more of the same as the Vatican gears up for the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that reshaped the Catholic Church and are key to understanding this papacy and Benedict's recent moves to quell liberal dissent and promote a more conservative brand of Catholicism.

Benedict's pontificate officially began April 24, 2005, with an inaugural Mass in St. Peter's Square. The pope promised then not to impose his own will on the church but rather to listen "to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by him, so that he himself will lead the church at this hour of our history."

Benedict has certainly left a mark, pressing a conservative interpretation of Vatican II's key teachings, appointing like-minded bishops and making his priority the revitalization of traditional Catholicism in a world, which he often laments, seems to think that it can do without God.

He set out many of those priorities in a December 2005 speech to his closest Vatican collaborators, insisting that Vatican II didn't represent a break from the past as many liberal-minded Catholics would like to think but rather a renewal of the church's core teachings and traditions.

Last week, the Vatican cracked down on the largest umbrella group of U.S. nuns, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith accused the group of taking positions that undermine church teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality, while promoting "certain radical feminist themes."

Earlier, the pope took to task dissident priests in Austria who have openly called for ordaining women and relaxing the celibacy requirement for priests.