"I look forward to seeing who our next Holy Father is and how he is going to move the church into the future,” says Maureen Ferguson, senior policy advisor for the Catholic Association.

Haris Tarin, director of the Washington, DC office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, says Pope Benedict XVI was outspoken on Syria, preemptive war, human rights abuses, and Middle East peace, and he leaves behind an overall legacy of “quite a positive interaction” between Christians and Muslims.

This Catholic theologian says the church needs a new pope who is a man of the world with pastoral sensitivity, someone who will “walk in the shoes of Peter.”

We spoke with Catholics about their reaction to the news that Pope Benedict will step down at the end of February and what they hope to see in his successor.