Word: benediction
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Popes don't need to worry about approval polls, but Benedict XVI must have been happy on Tuesday to leave the Vatican for a weeklong visit to Cameroon and Angola, his 11th trip abroad as Pope yet his first to Africa. Almost everyone, including supporters, acknowledges that Benedict's controversial decision in January to lift the excommunication of four bishops from a defiant, ultra-traditionalist faction - including a Holocaust denier - caused unprecedented damage to his leadership of the 1.1 billion-strong Catholic Church. Indeed, in a letter to bishops last week, the Pope both openly admitted to errors in managing...
...Holy See, according to this source, are now working "in great fear" of making further missteps (which have recently included controversies in Brazil and Austria). "The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing," he says. The good news on Tuesday, at least, was that Benedict's Alitalia flight lifted off on time. (See pictures of the Supreme Pontiff...
Whatever he encounters over the next seven days, Benedict will certainly appreciate a break from the goings-on in Rome. Africa, where the faith is fervent and the Pope always popular, is a chance for Benedict to put some space between himself and the troubles back at headquarters. He landed in Yaoundé, Cameroon, late Tuesday to an adoring crowd of young and old alike, waving Vatican flags and pictures of the white-haired German, who turns 82 next month. Indeed, Africa is where the Roman Catholic Church is expanding most rapidly in the world, typically with a more devout...
Pope John Paul II made evangelizing the Southern Hemisphere a priority of his papacy, visiting Africa 12 times, drawing massive crowds and presumably converting some with his charismatic presence. Benedict hopes to repeat the big crowds, particularly in an open-air mass in Luanda, Angola, on Sunday, though it remains an open question whether this Pope has the same powers of persuasion as his predecessor...
...priests tell me that their superiors belittled the fact that they were exorcists. Interestingly, though, the newer generation of priests are more responsive to the reality of the devil, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that John Paul II was and Pope Benedict XVI is a little more conservative, so the younger seminarians are a little less apt to ridicule. The older priests of Father Gary's generation didn't want to talk about...