By: (AP) Pope Benedict XVI, following the example of his predecessors, will hold a news conference Saturday, his first since being named the 265th leader of the Roman Catholic Church.
The encounter, which was announced Wednesday by the Vatican, was expected to be held inside the Vatican press office in an auditorium outfitted with a live television feed. If history is any guide, Benedict will make an introductory statement and take questions from reporters.
Pope John Paul I met the media Sept. 1, 1978, six days after being elected, and Pope John Paul II took questions from reporters on Oct. 21, 1978, five days after being named pope, the Vatican said. John Paul II also regularly took questions from reporters in airborne news conferences during his foreign trips.
Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, appeared with some regularity at Vatican news conferences during his two decades as prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, never shying from responding to questions directly.
And when Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls would try to steer reporters away from asking Ratzinger questions off the topic he was presenting, the cardinal would often give answers that made headlines.
In 2002, during the height of the clerical sex abuse scandal in the United States, Ratzinger appeared at a news conference to present a new apostolic letter by Pope John Paul II on penance.
After his opening statement, reporters asked the cardinal about the extraordinary meeting he had attended of American cardinals summoned to Rome a few weeks earlier. While Navarro-Valls tried to deflect the questions, Ratzinger responded, saying he had found the meetings opportune and that the American bishops were working on a "national standard" for a judicial process to deal with offenders.
Occasionally, he would show some exasperation with reporters' questions.
In 1998, a period during which the Vatican was cracking down on dissenting theologians, Ratzinger quipped that no one should be surprised that the Vatican was maintaining a hard line on the ban on ordination of women, celibacy for priests and the prohibition on contraception.
"Where have they been for the past 10 years?" he asked, responding in his heavily accented Italian -- the language of Vatican news conferences.
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