Word: benedict
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...remember what we saw at Auschwitz. Even the most hardened Vatican reporter's voice lowers to a whisper when remembering Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Nazi death camp on May 28, 2006. The German pontiff had arrived under threatening skies, which later turned to a soft but steady rain shower as he toured the grounds, met with Holocaust survivors and read his theological discourse that asked, "Why Lord did you remain silent?" But by the time Benedict was standing before a memorial by the ruins of a crematorium, the rain had stopped, and a vivid rainbow appeared across...
...Benedict's arrival at Ground Zero comes seven years after new, unspeakable violence, with its own religious dynamic. There was neither rain nor rainbow for this papal pilgrimage, but after five days of sunshine, the air was raw Sunday and a heavy fog covered even the top floors of the much smaller buildings that surrounded the massive crater left by the 19 followers of a blind faith...
Later, at a chapel in Yonkers, he hugged two young disabled girls, before moving to an outdoor rally with seminarians and Catholic youth. As the crowd chanted "Viva il papa! Viva il papa!" (Long live the Pope!), Benedict seemed almost like his charismatic predecessor John Paul II, going off script, and saluting from every corner of the stage...
...Benedict's morning homily at the landmark 5th Avenue cathedral included a first-ever papal plea to repair damages from the ideological battles that followed the 1960s Second Vatican Council. "One of the great disappointments which followed the Second Vatican Council, with its call for a greater engagement in the Church's mission to the world, has been the experience of division between different groups, different generations, different members of the same religious family," he said. "We can only move forward if we turn our gaze together to Christ! In the light of faith, we will then discover the wisdom...
...Patrick's Cathedral Mass had been billed as the moment the Pope would broach the topic of the U.S. Church's sex abuse crisis. But having already spoken three different times about the crisis since arriving - and offering a poignant and unprecedented private meeting with victims of abusive priests - Benedict focused his remarks in New York on the need to repair the bond between the faithful and their priests. He prayed for "purification" and "healing," assuring the priests of his "spiritual closeness as you strive to respond with Christian hope to the continuing challenges that this situation presents...