[...] While the Moral Majority, the 700 Club and a growing bloc of Christian Conservatives have wielded a great deal of political influence in America, two years ago these protestant fundamentalists formed a coalition with conservative Catholics to re-elect President George Bush. In 2004, the Vatican intervened directly into the US presidential election to endorse their champion, George Bush. The back-story is both fascinating and compelling, for it illuminates the political dynamics taking shape in the nomination, possible confirmation and conflict centering on Alito. In June, 2004, soon after Bush's papal audience with the late pontiff, Pope John Paul II, a letter signed by Former Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, who now reigns as Pope Benedict XVI, threatened to excommunicate any Catholic politician in favor of abortion as well as any Catholic voters who would support Kerry at the polls. At that point in the presidential campaign George Bush was trailing John Kerry by double digits in the polls, and Bush seemed doomed to become a one-term president like his father.

During his papal audience with the late Pope John Paul II, Bush is reported to have complained to the pontiff and other members of the curia, including Former Cardinal Ratzinger, that he did not have the total support of all of the US Bishops. Ratzinger's letter swiftly resolved that dilemma for the politically beleaguered president.

In a perceptive article titled "Holy Warriors," Sidney Blumenthal, a former advisor to President Clinton, ascribed Bush's narrow victory over Kerry directly to the political impact of the Ratzinger letter. During his long career at the Vatican, Former Cardinal Ratzinger's decisive handling of complicated problems had become a matter of record. His official investigation of the priestly child abuse scandal involving Catholic clerics gave him the knowledge and understanding of the political and legal dynamics prevalent in Bush's America.

During 2002 and 2003, Former Cardinal Ratzinger had been the Prefect of The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). In previous centuries, the CDF was known as the Inquisition. In his official capacity as Prefect, he was largely responsible for the Vatican's ecclesiastical investigation into thousands of cases of priestly child sexual abuse. Former Cardinal Ratzinger's handling of that scandal has been the subject of substantial analysis and criticism.

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