His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI was elected Pope of the Roman Catholic Church on April 19, 2005. As such, he is Bishop of Rome, sovereign of the Vatican City State, patriarch of the West, primate of Italy, and supreme pontiff of the worldwide Catholic Church in union with Rome, including those Eastern Rite Churches in communion with the Holy See. He will be formally installed as pontiff during the Mass of Papal Installation on April 24, 2005.

At 78 years old, he is the oldest pope elected since Pope Clement XII in 1730, and is the first German pontiff since Adrian VI (1522–1523) who was born in what is now the Netherlands, but which was then seen as part of Germany. The last pope to come from within the modern boundaries of Germany was Victor II, who died in 1057. Benedict XVI is the 8th German pope in history; the first was Gregory V. The last Benedict, Benedict XV, served as pontiff from 1914 to 1922 and thus reigned during World War I.

He was appointed prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by Pope John Paul II in 1981, made a Cardinal Bishop of the episcopal see of Velletri-Segni in 1993, and was elected Dean of the College of Cardinals in 2002, becoming titular bishop of Ostia. He was already one of the most influential men in the Vatican and a close associate of the late John Paul II before he became pope. He also presided over the funeral of John Paul II and the Conclave in 2005 which elected him. During the most recent sede vacante, he was the highest-ranking official in the Roman Catholic Church.

Some see Benedict as a traditionalist, others as merely orthodox, but almost all observers agree that he is a staunch defender of the Church. He is an opponent of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and abortion and has spoken about the unique role of the Catholic Church in salvation and has called all other Christian churches and ecclesial communities "deficient." As a Cardinal, he wrote Truth and Tolerance, a book in which he denounces the use of tolerance as an excuse to distort the truth.