Word: benedicts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Behind Benedict's Vatican Overhaul Though eyes are on his trip home, the Pope is (gradually) launching big changes back in the Roman Curia
...week after Pope Benedict XVI crashed onto the front pages with his controversial remarks on Islam, two central questions hang over the Holy See: How did that inflammatory quote get into the speech in the first place, and how do we get him out of this fix (and off the front pages)? The answers - tied both to the Pope's old habits and recent changes in the Roman Curia bureaucracy - are key to helping Catholicism's communicator-in-chief manage his message more smoothly and prevent another PR disaster like this one from happening again...
...Benedict's speech last Tuesday at his old university in Bavaria was undoubtedly provocative and open to a range of interpretations. And for that reason, any course in Communication 101 - not to mention centuries of Vatican diplomacy - could have seen this coming. So much so that one wonders if the Pope didn't show his speech to even a single top collaborator...
...input from various offices in the Roman Curia - and particularly in the latter years of the previous papacy, bureaucrats actually wrote the speeches themselves. But the effective No. 2 man in the Curia bureaucracy, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, had been a lame duck over the last two months after Benedict announced his replacement as Secretary of State would begin this fall (Sep. 15, in fact, the day after the Pope's return from Germany). Insiders say the 78-year-old Italian hadn't had an effective working relationship with the German Pope since he became Pope (some believe he may have...
...without some context or interpretation. One might even defend the Pope's use of the historical quote in order to pursue his intellectual point - but not his simply leaving it there to flap in the wind, without saying what he thought of its merits. At his Sunday Angelus prayer, Benedict in fact stated clearly that he did not agree with the Emperor, and that he respects Muslims - two points that should have been inserted in his speech right next to the emperor's black-and-white quote...