Word: costantini
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Francesco Costantini was only an unschooled village boy from Viterbo when he went to Rome at the age of 14 and landed a job as office boy in the U.S. Embassy. His budding career in the world of diplomacy nearly ended three years later when he was fired for getting into a fight. But Francesco was a resilient boy. Soon afterward he landed another job in the British embassy and from there went on to change, in his modest way, the course of history. Last week, having long since retired as one of the most successful spies in history...
...duty as night custodian of the building, he removed an entire 24-volume set of official British code books, took them over to his Italian contact, smoked and drank in nervous anxiety for seven hours while they were being photographed, and had them back safe in the morning. That, Costantini did admit, "was a bad moment," but it had a telling effect on Fascist policy. After that. Benito Mussolini's breakfasts were made pleasanter by the fact that he could read reports from Whitehall to Rome often before British Ambassador Sir Eric Drummond himself had seen them...
...sacred art, which originated with Christian society, possesses its own ends, from which it can never diverge." Although the statement also deplored stereotyped religious art, Vatican spokesmen admitted that it was aimed principally at modern artists who find church decoration a new and challenging technical medium. Wrote Archbishop Celso Costantini: "We are at present in a Babel of art ... The clamor caused by Matisse decorating the chapel of Vence has not yet died down . . . Chagall would like to paint a Catholic chapel . . . and Picasso has been toying with the idea of decorating a Communist chapel-... It is high time...
...Vatican Prelates Celso Costantini of Propaganda Fide, Alfredo Ottaviani of the Holy Office, and Valerio Valeri of the State Secretariat...
...show, but a few found it bewildering. Looking at a red-lacquered altar from Japan, a woman from Germany exclaimed: "I just couldn't pray properly before such a thing!" Since a Japanese might have equal difficulty at a Gothic altar rail, the objection pretty well illustrated Monsignor Costantini's point: that native art may serve faith better than the alien kind...