APOLLO was an artist when it came to handing out punishment to those who displeased him. When Cassandra, daughter of King Priam of Troy, got in his way he condemned her always to prophesy correctly, but never to be believed. Hours after Joseph Ratzinger’s translation as Pope Benedict XVI there have been all kinds of prophecies about his pontificate, and about the future of the Roman Catholic Church he has been called to lead.

Yet, writing in 1995, that modern-day Cassandra, the liberal historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto, already foresaw Benedict’s election (or that of someone very like him) and with it the challenge he must now take up: “The effect (of Christian fundamentalism) will be mitigated if the Catholic Church — the world’s biggest and most widespread communion — keeps up what may become a unique commitment to moral absolutism in defence of human dignity, individual freedom, social justice and the sanctity of life. Yet the tempters who are always cajoling the Pope to compromise will probably triumph — not when the present pontiff dies, because the long life in office of John Paul II has strengthened the moral fibre of the cardinalate, but in the next pontificate after that.”

The first part of Fernández-Armesto’s prophecy is likely to be unpopular with anyone who cannot tell the difference between intolerance and the steadfast defence of absolute truth, or who are liable to mistake moral and theological precision for the ruthless maintenance of tradition. In this camp is pretty much everyone, Catholic and Protestant, agnostic and atheist, who thinks that the Vatican’s consistent anti-modernism is a terrible hindrance to human progress. But the second part of Fernández-Armesto’s prophecy will upset those who believe that because the Church has resisted modernity in the past it can go on doing so in the future.

As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a post which once carried the portentous title of Grand Inquisitor, it has been Joseph Ratzinger’s job to stand against anyone who thinks that the Catholic Church must play by the same rules as the rest of civil society. The Church, Cardinal Ratzinger was charged with pointing out, is a “superhuman reality” whose “fundamental structures are willed by God himself and are thus untouchable”. In this respect there has been something of Cassandra in Ratzinger’s own public persona, and, as he was signalling in the manifesto he delivered as the eulogy at John Paul II’s funeral Mass, though he may surprise the world in other ways, he has no plans to court popularity for the sake of it. Shocking as the view might seem to those now engaged in electioneering, faithfulness to truth matters more to Benedict XVI than popularity.

Some of those seeking to fathom what kind of pontiff Benedict intends to be have looked for a clue in the name he has taken, since it has not been uncommon for Popes to take the name of the predecessor they most admire. Here at least, those hoping for an open-handed pontificate might take some comfort. The last Benedict to occupy the throne of Peter, Benedict XV, did his best to end the conflict in the late-19th century between traditionalists and modernists, and made himself unpopular with both sides in the First World War by his tireless efforts to achieve peace.

Yet perhaps the most curious and striking fact about the new Pope’s namesake is that, two years before his death in 1922, the Turks erected a statue of him whose inscription hailed Benedict XV as “the great pope of the world tragedy . . . the benefactor of all people, irrespective of nationality or religion”. That will give the new Benedict, who as Cardinal Ratzinger argued against including Turkey in the European Union because it was not a Christian country, something to think about.

Stephen Plant, a Methodist minister, teaches theology in Cambridge