You are a rational human being. Your type is quiet and doesn't make the headlines. The "religious conservatives" who do make the headlines are not like you.
Unfortunately we live in a world on the web where people who are religious, atheists, conservative, liberal, or whatever are put into little boxes and made fun of. This is what passes for wisdom anymore (instead of rational, clear discussion about beliefs and issues)
I think you'll find that both the current Pope and the last Pope are, by any conceivable definition, "religious conservatives who make the headlines". You'll find if you read their writings on the topic for five seconds that they're pretty much in the same place as the grandparent.
Are you sure you're not seeing confirmation bias? As in, "It would disagree with my worldview greatly if I thought religious conservatives were basically decent people. Accordingly, I only remember the ones who aren't"? (I won't discount the possibility of confirmation bias in the media, granted. Phelps on AIDS makes for a much punchier quote than John Paul II on AIDS.)
And if I recall correctly, the last pope moved to the right under the influence of the current pope.
The current pope, with his apparent pseudo embrace of the nouveau anti-evolutionists, is significantly further to the right then most of the Vatican establishment, which has considered the creation stories to be an allegory for many, many years now.
When we get a new pope who knows what he'll be like.