Word: benedict
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...what has been one of the most discussed gestures of a tightly choreographed day came at the Arlington National Cemetery evening burial service. Retired Washington Archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick read excerpts from a private letter Kennedy wrote to Pope Benedict XVI - hand-delivered in July by President Obama - and portions of the Vatican response to Kennedy two weeks later. After making no public comment nor authorizing an official communique after Kennedy's death, was the Pope publicly reaching out to this controversial Catholic politician? According to both Vatican and U.S.-based Church officials, the answer...
There was a poignant footnote to President Obama's historic July 10 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. Behind closed doors in the papal library, Obama handed Benedict a letter that Senator Edward Kennedy had asked him to personally deliver to the Pontiff. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs later told reporters that nobody - not even the President - knew the contents of the sealed missive. Obama asked Benedict to pray for Kennedy and called the ailing Senator afterward to fill him in on his encounter with the 82-year-old Pope...
...have been asking the Pope for forgiveness. The Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano reported Kennedy's death, praising his work on civil rights and fighting poverty, but noted that his record was marred by his stance on abortion. As of yet, unlike some other world leaders, Pope Benedict has not commented or issued an official communiqué in response to Kennedy's death. The niceties of international diplomacy do not require the Pope to issue a statement on the death of a non-head of state. Earlier in August, when the Senator's sister Eunice was dying...
...During Benedict's 2008 trip to the U.S., there was some heated debate - with conflicting photographs and eyewitness accounts - about whether Kennedy took Holy Communion at the papal Mass at Nationals Stadium in Washington, with conservatives insisting that the Pope says the rite should be denied to prochoice politicians. With this in mind, Church observers are keen to see if Boston's Archbishop Cardinal Sean O'Malley will preside over Kennedy's funeral. Some conservatives already see the fact that the rites are not being held in a cathedral (but rather at the Senator's favorite church) as significant. (UPDATE...
...marriage in 1958 was performed by Cardinal Francis Spellman, the influential Archbishop of New York. His mother Rose once reportedly said that she'd dreamed that her youngest son would become a priest rather than a politician, destined to ultimately rise to bishop status. (See pictures of Pope Benedict XVI visiting America...