former joseph ratzinger, made history today when he left the vatican in a helicopter from rome to the papal summer home, castel gandolfo, for the first phase of his retirement. in his final tweet as pope he said, quote, thank you for your love and support. may you always experience the joy that comes from putting christ at the center of your lives. his departure ushers in a new era for the church and the more than 1 billion catholics worldwide, and soon more than 100 cardinals will meet in conclave to select a new pope and decide the future of the faith. george weigel is our nbc news vatican analyst, and tom roberts is managing editor of the national catholic reporter and author of the emerging catholic church. george, you know, in american presidential politics, we always try to correct for the latest president. you know, we had truman who had too much of a kansas city problem, so we brought in mr. clean eisenhower. we had nixon and ford, so we brought in a guy who had never been
coming from catholic media. you mentioned in your lead one very important newspaper, and its called it s the national catholic reporter. it called for house cleaning, it called for full disclosure and total transparency on this issue saying that this crisis is probably now as bad as we have seen in modern times. it needs nothing less than full disclosure to get to the bottom of it. jim, appreciate the wrap-up there. reminder for our viewers, read more about this on msnbc.com. more snow heading for colorado. the national weather service says the mountains could get up to ten more inches. let s go to bill karins. i mean this is really causing a huge spring headache because flights are canceled, roads are closed now because of this weather. this is just the beginning of the storm, contessa. it is just about done in colorado but this storm will track across the country in the next five days. it is really going to hit the
priest in wisconsin that has drawn the pope further into this scandal. we will be joined once again by our cnn senior vatican analyst john allen who is also senior correspondent for the national catholic reporter an independent newspaper. john, good morning. good to have you here again. we talked to you a week ago. i guess kind of tell me what has changed in the week since we ve talked and also it has got to hurt the vatican and the church s image for people to be asking about the pope when he was, in fact, cardinal ratzinger. what did he know and when did he know it? you don t want to be asking that about a pope. hey, t.j. i m here this morning to play sarah palin to your john mccain. that is, i m giving you a boost just by showing up. but to come to your question, i mean, you re right. increasingly the question is being asked, what did the pope know and when did he know it? it s being asked on two fronts. one, a case in germany, during the five years when he was the