When Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope as Benedict XVI in 2005, the western Christian world found itself in the remarkable position of having both the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches led by men viewed by many as their leading theologians. Rowan Williams and Ratzinger, although a generation apart in age, had more in common than academic credentials when they came to office.
Both are steeped in the theology of the early Christian writers known as the Church Fathers, and although Williams focused his Oxford doctoral studies on eastern Christianity, he also has a deep and sympathetic engagement with Augustine of Hippo, on whom Ratzinger had written at Munich, before going on to his second doctoral thesis (as is normal in Germany) on Bonaventure.
Both have also used this training in the depths of Christian tradition to do theology in a way that involved new insights and potential controversy. This is reasonably well-known on Williams' part; his famous essay 'The Body's Grace' remains one of the most important starting points for a revised assessment of homosexuality that is more than lazy indifference to sexual morality in the name of inclusion.
It may seem a more surprising assessment of Ratzinger, who had a reputation for being a guardian of orthodoxy rather than an explorer of its frontiers. His Bonaventure thesis had however been savaged by an examiner for alleged traces of 'modernism', and he was one of the theological advisers at the Second Vatican Council.
If he subsequently leaned towards tradition more clearly, it is fair to say that Ratzinger has, like Williams, always written and acted with a deep commitment to the truth as well as to his perceptions of the needs of the Church.
Yet Ratzinger came to the papacy, as far as many in the West were concerned at least, as threat more than promise. Having headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for most of John Paul II's papacy he had a reputation as a watchdog, who had acted against theologians such as Leonardo Boff and Anthony de Mello as well as seeming to slow or reverse the momentum for change initiated at the Council.
Williams on the other hand was a figure greeted with hope by Anglicans and others who anticipated that his grounding in tradition and openness to change would be reflected in his role as Archbishop of Canterbury. He had not, however, had to exercise comparable authority, or at