Pope Benedict's First Year

This article in U.S. News & World Report is as good an account of the current pontiff's first year as any. The authors spend a lot of time exclaiming how wrong the media rent-an-experts were about the direction and tone of his reign, and then trot them out again to predict how his second year will go. But it's a good article, nonetheless, even featuring a couple of soundbites from Richard John Neuhaus. The pope's challenges are steep: Reviving Christianity among the young in Europe, mucking out the American church in the wake of the sex scandals, dealing with Islam, etc. He's confounded the expections of many in his first year, let's see how many he fulfills in his second.