Video: 'NBC News Coverage of the Election of Pope Benedict XVI'

(Tuesday, April 19, 2005, 15:50 UTC) — Roman Catholic cardinals reached to the church’s conservative wing on Tuesday and chose as the 265th pope Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a seasoned and hard-line German theologian who served as John Paul II’s defender of the faith.

At 5:50 p.m. in Rome, wispy white smoke puffed from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel where the cardinals were meeting, signaling that the new pope had been chosen, only a day after the secret conclave began.

His name was not announced until nearly an hour later, after the great bell at St. Peter’s tolled, and the scarlet curtain over the basilica’s central balcony parted and a cardinal stepped out to announce in Latin, “Habemus papam!”

“Dear brothers and sisters,” Cardinal Ratzinger, 78, said, speaking Italian in a clear voice, spreading his arms wide over the crowd from the balcony. “After the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in the Lord’s vineyard.” He announced his name as Benedict XVI.