VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – – Pope Benedict was cheered by conservatives for trying to reaffirm traditional Catholic identity but liberals accused him of turning back the clock on reforms and hurting dialogue with Muslims, Jews and other Christians.

The 85-year-old German-born pontiff announced on Monday he would step down at the end of the month because of the effects of old age meant he was unable to complete his ministry. It was a decision that stunned Church officials and Catholics around the world, but one that he had hinted at in the past.

Benedict enjoyed relatively good health most of his life but the first sign that he was slowing down came in October 2011, when he began using a wheeled platform to move up the main aisle of St. Peter’s Basilica.

In a book in 2010, he said he would not hesitate to become the first pontiff to resign willingly in more than 700 years if he felt himself no longer able, “physically, psychologically and spiritually” to run the Catholic Church

Before he was elected pope, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was known as “God’s rottweiler” because of his stern stand on theological issues. But it became clear that not only did he not bite, but he barely even barked.

Despite great reverence for his charismatic, globe-trotting predecessor — whom he put on the fast track to sainthood and beatified in 2011 — aides said he was determined not to change his quiet manners to imitate John Paul’s style.

A professorial type who relaxed by playing the piano, Benedict sought to show the world the gentler side of the man who had been the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer for nearly a quarter of a century.

But child abuse scandals hounded most of his papacy. He ordered an official inquiry into abuse in Ireland, which led to the resignation of several bishops. But the Vatican’s relations with once Catholic Ireland plummeted during his papacy, to the point that Dublin closed its embassy to the Holy See in 2011.

Victims demanded that he be investigated by the International Criminal Court but the Vatican said he could not be held responsible for the crimes of others.

Scandal closer to home hit in 2012 when the pontiff’s butler was s found to be the source of leaked documents alleging corruption in the Vatican’s business dealings, causing an international furor.

GERMAN PAST

The first German pope for 1,000 years, Benedict confronted his country’s past when he visited the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.

Calling himself “a son of Germany,” he prayed and asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, most of them Jews, died there during World War Two.

Ratzinger served in the Hitler Youth during World War Two when membership was compulsory. He was never a member of the Nazi party and his family opposed Adolf Hitler’s regime.

But his trip to Germany also prompted the first major crisis of his pontificate. In a university lecture he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor as saying Islam had only brought evil to the world and that it was spread by the sword.

After protests that included attacks on churches in the Middle East and the killing of a nun in Somalia, the pope said he regretted any misunderstanding the speech caused.

In a move that was widely seen as conciliatory, he made a historic trip to predominantly Muslim Turkey in 2006 and prayed in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque with the city’s grand mufti.

But months later, former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami met the pope and said wounds between Christians and Muslims were still “very deep” as a result of the Regensburg speech.

In 2007 Benedict made appointed a Polish bishop who once spied for communist police. The bishop had to stand down.

Benedict made a successful trip to the United States in 2008. He apologized for the sexual abuse scandal, promised that pedophile priests would go, and comforted abuse victims.

But 2009 became an annus horribilis for the pope as he made one misstep after another.

The Jewish world, as well as many Catholics, were outraged after Benedict lifted the excommunication of four traditionalist bishops, including one who openly denied the Holocaust.

The pope prompted international outrage again in March of 2009, when he told reporters on a plane taking him to Africa and the use of condoms in the fight against AIDS only worsened the problems.

TRUSTED MEN

At the Vatican, he preferred to appoint men he trusted blindly and some of his early appointments were controversial.

He chose Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who had worked with him for years in the Vatican’s doctrinal office, to be Secretary of State even though Bertone had no diplomatic experience.

One of the themes he often returned to was the threat of relativism, rejecting the concept that moral values are not absolute but relative to those holding them.

“We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism, which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one’s own ego and one’s own desires,” he said in a homily at John Paul’s funeral, which many believed convinced his brother cardinals to vote for him in the conclave that followed.

Benedict committed himself to Christian unity but other religions criticized him in 2007 when he approved a document that re-stated the Vatican position that all other Christian denominations apart from Catholicism were not full churches of Jesus Christ.

He confirmed his conservative view of other religions in 2011, when an inter-faith meeting in Assisi, Italy did not include the simultaneous common prayer that was held when John Paul initiated the gatherings in 1986.

At the same meeting however, he meekly acknowledged “with great shame” that Christianity had used force in its long history as he joined other religious leaders in condemning violence and terrorism in God’s name.

Benedict’s relations with Jews had highs and lows.

Jews were offended by his decision to allow a wider use of the old-style Latin Mass and missal, which included a prayer for the conversion of the Jews.

Jews took offence again in December 2009 when he re-started the process putting his wartime predecessor Pius XII, accused by some Jews of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust, back on the road to sainthood after a two-year pause for reflection.

However in 2011, he won acclaim by personally exonerating Jews of allegations they were responsible for Christ’s death, repudiating the concept of collective Jewish guilt that haunted Christian-Jewish relations for centuries.

TURNING BACK THE CLOCK

His critics saw many of his actions as attempts to turn back the clock on reforms enacted by the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, which modernized the Church and encouraged inter-religious dialogue.

He made it easier for married Anglican priests, upset that their church was becoming too liberal, to convert to Catholicism.

Benedict wrote three encyclicals — the most important form of papal document. His first, “Deus Caritas Est” (God is Love) in 2006, was about the various concepts of love, both erotic and spiritual.

The 2007 “Spe Salvi” (Saved by Hope), was an attack on atheism and an appeal to a pessimistic world to find strength in Christian hope. The 2009 Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), called or a re-think of the way the world economy is run.

Under the German’s meek demeanor lay a steely intellect ready to dissect theological works for their dogmatic purity and debate fiercely against dissenters.

Ratzinger first gained attention as a liberal theological adviser at the Second Vatican Council.

However, the Marxism and atheism of the 1968 student protests across Europe prompted him to become more conservative to defend the faith against growing secularism.

After stints as a theology professor and then archbishop of Munich, Ratzinger was appointed head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the successor office to the Inquisition, in 1981.

He and Pope John Paul agreed that traditionally sound doctrine and theology had to be restored in the Church after a period of experimentation.

In the CDF office, Ratzinger first turned his attention to the “liberation theology” popular in Latin America, and drew criticism for his severity in ordering the one-year silencing in 1985 of Brazilian friar Leonardo Boff, whose writings were attacked for using Marxist ideas.

Ratzinger issued a firm Vatican denunciation of homosexuality and gay marriage in 1986.

He brought pressure in the 1990s against theologians, mostly in Asia, who saw non-Christian religions as part of God’s plan for humanity.

A 2004 document sternly denounced “radical feminism” as an ideology that undermined the family and obscured the natural differences between men and women.

His combative side came out in 2000 in a dispute over a CDF document entitled Dominus Iesus. Aimed at restating the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church against the more inclusive views in Asia, it branded other Christian denominations as deficient or not quite real churches.

Anglican, Lutheran and other Protestant churches which had been in ecumenical dialogue with Rome for years were shocked. They were further upset when Ratzinger dismissed protests from Lutherans as “absurd”.

The son of a police chief, he was born in Marktl am Inn in Bavaria, southern Germany, in 1927.

“Neither Ratzinger nor any member of his family was a National Socialist,” John Allen, a leading Church expert, wrote in a biography of Ratzinger.

In 2002, he became dean of the College of Cardinals which elected him pontiff three years later.

(Editing by Tom Heneghan and Giles Elgood)

An ad for Oakley, the top ranked dog heading into Westminster (via Blue Rose Kennels)

NEW YORK—Claire Wisch knew there was something special about Oakley even when he was a puppy. Rowdy and playful, Oakley, a German Wirehaired Pointer with a distinctive salt-and-pepper coat and long red beard, was a “handful” when he was young, recalled Wisch, a longtime dog breeder from Brunswick, Md.

But when Oakley did stand still, Wisch was stunned to see him adopt what handlers in the industry call a “free stack”—a perfectly squared pose where the dog’s tail, back and nose are framed in a straight line. Oakley had assumed the posture with no training—only the genetics of his mother, who had enjoyed a brief career as a show dog before he was born.

“He would just stop and pose,” Wisch says “He just had that look. He had a spark. It was clear that he was born to be in the ring.”

This week in New York, Oakley will be the dog to beat in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. He enters Westminster, the most famous dog show in the world, as the top ranked dog in the country, having racked up more than 80 best-in-show titles in his career. He bested more than 97,000 dogs in shows around the country in 2012—spending virtually every weekend last year in competition.

But like most of the dogs who make it into Westminster, Oakley’s rise wasn’t just about his performance in the ring. The dog world’s top competitors, much like presidential candidates, are also expected to wage a pricey, high-profile campaign of photo ops and major advertising to help the win attention and establish a recognizable identity if they are to have any chance to win.

Wisch gave up ownership of Oakley two years ago, signing him over Victor Malzoni, a Brazilian real estate mogul and dog breeder, who agreed to fund what people in the industry describe as a “campaign” for Oakley to raise his profile and to help him achieve the ultimate victory at Westminster.

Over the last year, Oakley has starred in glossy ads in dog industry trade magazines, including Dog News, documenting his many wins around the country as a way to build his “brand” among judges of future contests. The ads, run by virtually every leading dog at Westminster, are similar in spirit to the “For Your Consideration” ads that run ahead of major Hollywood award shows.

But that’s not all. In a move eerily similar to the kind presidential hopefuls undertake every four years, Oakley’s owner agreed to fund a full-out campaign sending the dog to crucial shows around the country to help him rack up points in hopes of earning an invite to Westminster.

Wisch said Oakley traveled to at least 150 dog shows in 2012. In some cases, his handler registered the dog at multiple shows on a single weekend, deciding at the last minute where to deploy the dog to earn the most points.

A dog accumulates points in shows based on the number of dogs competing. For example, if a dog competes against 10 other dogs in a breed category and wins, he or she wins nine points. If the dog then wins best in show at a competition where there are 300 dogs, that’s another 299 points. Dog owners are not only looking to compete in an intense schedule of shows, but they are also looking to score big by winning large competitions.

In December, Oakley edged out his closest rival—an English Springer Spaniel named Peyton—by just 2,100 points to claim the rank of top dog in 2012. His handlers managed the narrow victory by sending him to compete in Pennsylvania, at a smaller show, after learning that Peyton was competing at a larger show in Ohio during the final weekend of competition. It was a fight right to the finish—and no other dogs were close. The closest competitor, a Doberman Pinscher named FiFi, ended the year with just over 66,000 points—almost 30,000 points behind Oakley. All three earned an invite to Westminster.

“It’s a numbers game,” Wisch says. “Do you want to go to Ohio, where there are 3,000 dogs, or do you want to go to Pennsylvania, where there are 1,500 dogs, but you have a better shot at winning? And where is your main competition going to be? Can you beat him that particular day? It’s all a chess game. A high-stakes chess game.”

And it’s pricey. While no owners were willing to say exactly what they pay to “campaign” a dog, some suggested it might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost a dog ahead of Westminster. That’s a total that includes not only advertising but travel costs, hiring an experienced handler and the intense grooming and conditioning schedule the dogs maintain.

In some cases, dogs have traveled the country to do meet-and-greets with potential judges–looking for more face time than the typical 30-second period of judging at a show would allow.

“It’s a very expensive hobby,” says Steven Sansone, who, with his wife, Cynthia, owns Havannah, a Giant Schnauzer that will compete at Westminster. “We know there’s a lot of money in dog showing because we have left it there.”

Sansone, who lives outside Philadelphia and works in the finance industry, simply cleared his throat when asked for an estimate on how much he’d spent to promote his dog. Havannah has been featured in several two-page full color ads in Dog News in recent months—an ad that, based on the magazine’s rate card, cost at least $1,200 each time it ran. And that doesn’t include the cost of designing and producing the ad.

“If you are going to do this, you have to promote your dog,” Sansone said. “Does it work with judges? I don’t know. But it’s creating a brand. Your dog has to be known. No question.”

And that is the big unknown: Does any of this campaigning actually work? Many of the judges associated with Westminster declined to talk about their duties ahead of the show. But the show’s organizers have insisted that the judging is based only on how the dog is viewed inside the ring on competition day.

Yet many inside the industry are skeptical that campaigning doesn’t have an impact—suggesting the proof it works is that most of the major dog owners are doing it in more places than ever before.

In the run-up to Westminster, two of the major dog glossies—Dog News and Canine Chronicle—published two of their biggest issues ever, at more nearly 200 pages each. And the campaign has moved online, as a growing number of dog owners have published their ads on websites, including Best in Show Daily.

Denise Sutton—who owns Leo, a top Irish terrier who will compete at Westminster—says she began receiving phone calls and emails about advertising once her dog began moving up in the ranks. She ultimately ran one full-page ad in Dog News in early January, which cost $600.

“There are so many places to advertise now. And I’d love to do more, but it gets really expensive. Let’s get real,” Sutton says. “It adds up.”

But Nancy Martin, a veteran handler who has been showing at Westminster since 1970, says advertising is a requirement for any dog aiming to be taken seriously.

“To me advertising is proof that a product is a worthwhile product. It’s that simple,” says Martin, who was prominently featured in a two-page glossy ad in a recent edition of Dog News with Mimi, a Japanese chin she’ll show at Westminster this week.

Some owners take it even farther. London, a statuesque black poodle from Boca Raton, Fla., has a Facebook page in addition to his ads in the dog industry magazines. His owners, Jamie Danburg and Michele Molnar, post candid behind-the-scenes pictures of London on the road—including photos of the dog in curlers and looking at his iPad–and promote his victories around the country for the public.

“I think people want to keep up with dogs in different ways,” Molnar says. “People are curious about what goes into being a show dog and how he’s doing… People are interested in the subculture of the dog world.”

But some dogs come to Westminster without having campaigned much at all, in hopes that the best dog in judging really does win.

Keaton, a shaggy-haired Tibetan terrier from Long Island, N.Y., arrives at Westminster this week having been the subject of just one ad in Dog News last year.

Herman Goldstein, who owns the dog with his wife, Lois, says they couldn’t afford to do more—especially after last fall, when their house was flooded by Superstorm Sandy. The Goldsteins have been living in a motel ever since, while Keaton, who usually lives with them, has been staying with his handler. Goldstein says they never considered not competing.

“Some people spend so much money getting their dog out there. I wish I could do it. I wish I had the money to spend because I would. I just love my dog so much,” Goldstein said last week, as he affectionately lifted up Keaton’s long shaggy bangs so that this reporter could peer into his eyes.

“I just keep hoping that this will be like a movie, where a real dog like Keaton who really is our pet, can come into Westminster and win, in spite of all the money and campaigning you’ve seen from other dogs,” Goldstein said. “I think if there’s any place that something magical like that can happen, it’s here.”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A record $1 million reward was posted on Sunday for information leading to the capture of a fugitive former Los Angeles policeman suspected of targeting police officers and their families in three killings committed in retaliation for his 2008 firing.

Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said the reward, raised from private donations, police unions, businesses and city and county governments, marks the largest sum ever offered in Southern California in a criminal investigation.

The reward was posted as law enforcement agencies across the region pressed on for a fourth day in their search for the suspect, ex-LAPD officer and U.S. Navy reservist Christopher Dorner, 33. Beck described it as the most extensive manhunt ever mounted in the Los Angeles area.

He called the spate of revenge-driven violence Dorner is accused of committing “an act of domestic terrorism.”

“This is a man who has targeted those who we entrust to protect the public. His actions cannot go unanswered,” Beck said.

At a news conference, Beck said investigators were making progress but he declined to elaborate, saying they presumed that if Dorner is still alive, he would be following media coverage of the manhunt closely.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa added, “Our dedication to catching this killer remains steadfast, our confidence in bringing him to justice remains unshaken.”

An LAPD spokesman also said police would be providing extra security for the recording industry’s Grammy Awards ceremony on Sunday at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angles.

The search for Dorner has been focused in the snow-covered San Bernardino Mountains northeast of Los Angeles since a pickup truck belonging to Dorner was found abandoned and burning near the popular ski resort community of Big Bear Lake on Thursday.

Police throughout the region also have chased down numerous unconfirmed sightings and dead-end leads.

One of the latest of those, prompted by calls from two individuals reporting they had seen someone resembling Dorner, led police on Sunday to a hardware store in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley community of Northridge.

The store was evacuated and searched, but no evidence of Dorner’s presence was uncovered, police said.

His last confirmed encounters with authorities came early on Thursday in two Riverside County towns east of Los Angeles, police said. He is accused of exchanging gunfire with a pair of police officers in Corona, injuring one, and later ambushing two policemen at a stoplight in Riverside. One of those officers was killed, the other wounded.

‘UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE’

A rambling manifesto posted on Dorner’s Facebook page last week claimed he was wrongly terminated from the LAPD in September 2008 and vowed to seek revenge by unleashing “unconventional and asymmetrical warfare” on police officers and their families.

A former Navy lieutenant, Dorner was named as a suspect in last weekend’s slayings of a campus security officer and his fiance, the daughter of a retired Los Angeles police captain blamed in Dorner’s manifesto for his dismissal. The couple, Keith Lawrence, 27, and Monica Quan, 28, were found shot dead last Sunday in their car on the top level of a parking structure in the city of Irvine, south of Los Angeles.

Dorner had ended his military service two days earlier, but the Navy has not disclosed the circumstances of his discharge.

Quan’s father, Randy, had represented Dorner in disciplinary proceedings that led to his dismissal from the LAPD after a police inquiry found he had made false statements accusing a superior officer of using excessive force against a homeless person.

Beck announced on Saturday a reopening of the inquiry to “reassure the public that their police department is transparent and fair.”

The LAPD also has launched an inquiry into a police shooting in which two women were wounded when officers opened fire on a pickup truck resembling Dorner’s vehicle in a case of mistaken identity on Thursday. The two women, one of them aged 71, were delivering newspapers when they were shot.

The police officer who was killed in an ambush that morning was publicly identified on Sunday as Michael Crain, 34, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in the Riverside Police Department for 11 years.

LAPD spokesman Andrew Smith said “an army” of police officers would be providing security for a public memorial service planned for Crain on Wednesday.

In addition to keeping up the manhunt in and around Big Bear Lake, police were searching areas around the homes of more than 50 Los Angeles police officers whose families authorities believe Dorner has targeted as potential victims.

(Additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman. Editing by Christopher Wilson)