The air in St. Peter's Square carried the scent of damp wool and incense. A cold, persistent rain fell on the umbrellas of the faithful, on the crimson vestments of cardinals, on the gray stone of the basilica. This was not the weather for spectacle. It was weather for solemnity. On April 24, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was inaugurated as the 265th Supreme Pontiff. He took the name Benedict XVI.
The sensory details defined the moment. The weight of the pallium—a band of white wool embroidered with black crosses—placed on his shoulders. The faint, metallic smell of the Fisherman's Ring as it was slipped onto his finger. The sound of the Sistine Chapel Choir cutting through the patter of rain. He was not a charismatic unknown, like his predecessor. He was the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a man known for the precision of his theology, not the warmth of his public persona. The crowd's applause was respectful, measured.
He moved through the ritual with a scholar's care. His homily was a dense treatise, referencing Augustine, speaking of the 'dictatorship of relativism.' It was a lecture as much as a sermon. You could see it in the postures of the bishops listening, heads tilted in concentration rather than raised in celebration. The event felt less like a coronation and more like the ascension of a chief executive officer to a celestial corporation, one facing profound internal and external challenges. The rain seemed to underscore the burden. As he was carried through the square on the *sedia gestatoria*, the ancient portable throne, the droplets beaded on his white zucchetto. He looked less like a radiant father and more like a man who had accepted a terrible, complicated weight. The pageantry was immense, but the feeling on the ground was one of sober responsibility, dampened by a Roman spring shower.