Word: bulleteer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...church. In the end, not every Catholic--certainly not every American Catholic--considered Pope John Paul II's explosion a joyful noise unto the Lord. But the 264th occupant of the throne of St. Peter was no more silenced by their misgivings than by the assassin's bullet he survived in 1981 or the progressive ailments, including Parkinson's disease, that he withstood for at least a decade. He pursued God's truth with a fearless, anachronistic, nearly stunning purity of purpose, and the world was left to adapt as it might...
...during his weekly audience in St. Peter's Square, shots rang out, and he toppled back, his white cassock stained red. Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish rightist and a murderer who had earlier written a letter threatening to kill John Paul, was trying to follow through. The bullet passed within millimeters of a major artery and within inches of several vital organs. "Mary, my mother," John Paul gasped as he collapsed. Doctors removed part of his intestine and, over the next few days, replaced almost all his blood with transfusions...
...known to prostrate himself before her statues. Since the shooting occurred on the anniversary of the 1917 apparition of the Virgin near Fatima in Portugal, he was convinced he owed his life to her. He made a pilgrimage of thanks to Fatima, and the near fatal bullet was fitted into a jeweled crown worn by her statue. In 1983, out of the same wellspring of faith, emerged an act of stunning virtue: his forgiveness of Agca in the would-be assassin's jail cell...
...last glimpse of him high above the square became the latest in an album of images he left behind: a kiss on the tarmac in each new city; a smile lit by love and certainty; a white robe stained red by a would-be assassin's bullet, and the public forgiveness that followed; a challenge thrown down before prisoners and Presidents, sinners and saints to heed the highest calling of their hearts. He was the first Pope ever to visit a mosque, or launch a website, or commemorate the Holocaust at Auschwitz or find in a broken world so many...
...what is now Tokyo. Overshadowed not just by Tokyo to its east, but also by Osaka to its west, Nagoya languished, developing a reputation as a backwater among many Japanese (and a complete cipher to most foreigners) despite being Japan's fourth largest city. When a new generation of bullet trains between Tokyo and Osaka was introduced in 1992, the original schedules didn't even include a Nagoya stop. Two decades ago, a comedian named Tamori got laughs by mocking Nagoya's dialect, which he likened to cats' mewling...