Word: benediction
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...front pages in Britain and much of Europe, and remained a top story all summer. The McCanns - both physicians - proved adept at putting together a well-publicized global campaign to help find Madeleine. They enlisted the help of pop and sports stars, and even had an audience with Pope Benedict...
...Campidoglio city hall with "saluti Romani" - the Mussolini-era stiff-armed salute that was later adopted and made notorious by the Nazis. Alemanno has moved quickly to quell fears that he still espouses fascist ideals. Among his first gestures after the victory was to send telegrams to both Pope Benedict XVI and Rome's chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni. "I will be the mayor of all Romans: for those who voted for me, and those who didn't," he said. "We won't get dragged into the past when we're heading toward the future...
Close observers of Benedict, however, argue that his focus on reconciling reason and faith does not favor one over the other. While he may not dwell on the popular Padre Pio, the Pope, explains Raphaela Schmid, a Rome-based German philosopher and student of Ratzinger's writings, recognizes that Catholicism's more popular manifestations and the religion's search for an intellectual basis "both have a place in the Church." Schmid says that Benedict has explained why it is "not irrational" to venerate the saints, or believe in miracles. "What you see in this is the language of the heart...
...completed visit to the United States, the saints were the focus of his talk to young people and seminarians in Yonkers, New York. "Fix your gaze on our saints. The diversity of their experience of God's presence prompts us to discover anew the breadth and depth of Christianity," Benedict said. "Let your imaginations soar freely along the limitless expanse of the horizons of Christian discipleship. Sometimes we are looked upon as people who speak only of prohibitions. Nothing could be further from the truth! Authentic Christian discipleship is marked by a sense of wonder...
Still, every Pope has his favorite saints. Benedict's leans most of all toward St. Augustine, the fourth-century philosopher Father of the Church, whom he regularly cites in his homilies. Last year, Benedict made a pilgrimage to Pavia to pray at Augustine's relics there. And he is not excluding other sites of miracles from his future journeys. In September, Benedict is slated to visit Lourdes, the French town where millions of sick and disabled Catholics go each year to seek healing from a spring revealed by the Virgin Mary...