Catholic Pope Benedict XVI has a tremendous load on his shoulders and it is unlikely at age 78 that he will come close to resolving or even trying to resolve in his lifetime the many issues facing the church.

While Catholic devotion and participation in some countries may be holding steady or even increasing, the church has been forced to close parishes and fight the sharp decreases in priesthood membership in the United States. Then there are the lingering effects of the horrific sexual abuse scandal that many believed was not dealt with forcefully enough by the Catholic hierarchy, including the late Pope John Paul II.

John Paul II was a charismatic but conservative leader, and Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, appears likely to continue his policies. He was a close confidant of John Paul II and often figured in declarations and policies that emanated from the Vatican under John Paul. Some consider him an “interim” pope while serious internal matters are pondered and, ideally, resolved.

Other nations have other views of the new pontiff, but, in the United States, church members see at least four major issues facing the Vatican:

1. Allowing women to become priests and giving them the chance to follow the line of succession.

2. Allowing priests, male and female, to marry.

3. Altering the church’s views on abortion and birth control, conflicts that have created ongoing consternation among American Catholics in particular.

4. Putting all sexual abuse issues on the table in plain view, for America and everywhere else, punishing those who have been guilty of such crimes and setting firm and fast guidelines for behavior of clerics to prevent repetition of past scandals.

All this and more, of course, cannot possibly be dealt with quickly or effectively by a 78-year-old pope whose time in his position is realistically limited. John Paul, who served 26 years, died at age 84.

There will be a period of good feeling toward Benedict XVI embarks on his period of leadership, but his ascendancy to the papal throne will not be a productive one unless he and his associates make it clear very soon that they are fully aware of the aforementioned challenges and declare how they plan to deal with them — whether the decisions are popular or not.