Word: italian
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Rudolph Giuliani and Silvio Berlusconi share more than just Italian roots and an off-the-cuff approach to politics. The former mayor of New York and current Prime Minister of Italy also have the same beef with Pope Benedict XVI and the rules of the Catholic Church. Both political leaders are divorced and remarried Catholics, which shuts them out from receiving Holy Communion because of longstanding Church doctrine that forbids divorce. The ban, however, has not stopped either Berlusconi or Giuliani from receiving communion - and getting caught on camera doing so, with much tsk-tsking from the Church...
...Berlusconi, a media mogul who boasts about his Casanova talents, is publicly pushing for Benedict to change the Communion rules for remarried Catholics. A story in the Italian daily he owns, Il Giornale, recounted how the 71-year-old Prime Minister last Saturday passed up Communion, but asked the local bishop at the chapel near his villa on the island of Sardinia to reconsider the standing rules. Bishop Sebastiano Sanguinetti reportedly responded: "Go tell that to someone higher than me." There was no indication that Berlusconi had raised the matter when he met the pontiff earlier this month...
...Italian newspaper published a photograph last year of Berlusconi receiving communion at the 2000 private funeral in Tunisia of former Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi. Giuliani for his part was much more bold in his defiance of the ban, lining up for communion (offered in the pews by a priest) at the St. Patrick's Cathedral Mass during the Pope's visit to New York in April. New York's Archbishop, Cardinal Edward Egan, later publicly scolded the former mayor and presidential candidate, saying they had "an understanding" that he would not take Communion. A spokeswoman for Giuliani said...
...Good God, this match is not going to end. It didn't need a goal, it needed a mercy killing. But as Spain discovered in its difficult - and difficult to watch - 4-2 penalty kick shootout win in the quarter-finals of Euro 2008, trying to get past an Italian team committed to a defensive scheme is like playing in ski boots filled with linguini carbonara. The pace slows. Every passing lane seems clogged, and there are more defenders in the penalty area than pawns on a chess board...
...person seeking sanctuary from war and repression may not be one governments are willing to make, given that so many countries are already skittish over immigration. Last year alone, 20,000 people arrived in Italy by sea, most of them on rickety vessels from Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa; about half that number will seek asylum in the E.U. With anti-immigrant sentiment growing, the European Parliament this week passed tough new common immigration guidelines that allow E.U. countries to hold illegal migrants for up to 18 months before expelling them. And in the U.S., Congress has allocated...