Word: italianize
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sixth ballot. Over lunch, Wojtyla was so visibly upset by the coalescing forces that his friends feared he might refuse the papacy; Wyszynski took him aside and reminded him that acceptance is a Cardinal's duty. On the seventh ballot, only a lack of votes from the 25 Italian Cardinals stopped his election. Then the dam broke and virtually all but the ultraconservatives swung to the Pole. On the eighth and final ballot, according to most inside counts, he won a comfortable 94 votes from all but the hard-line right and a scattering of others. The conclave erupted...
Wojtyla is tireless, sometimes putting in 20-hour days, and known as a voracious reader. He is fluent in Latin, Italian, English, French and German, as well as Polish. Not Russian? Said a priest in his entourage when asked that question last week: "No Pole speaks Russian?but everyone understands it." A flip-up desk allows him to write while being driven in his car. He has a disconcerting habit of reading or writing while carrying on a conversation?and then displaying total recall of what was said...
...last non-Italian Pope was a Dutchman, Adrian VI (1522-23). A university chancellor and rector in the Low Countries, he also was Inquisitor General of Spain. For a man charged with burning heretics, he had a delicate sensibility. Shocked by the immorality of Renaissance art, he threatened to whitewash the Sistine Chapel...
...Roman Catholics regard as the first Pope was also, of course, the first non-Italian Pope: Simon Peter, the "rock" on whom Jesus Christ said he would build his church. For most of St. Peter's 263 successors, however, it was not the universal nature of the church but the strident demands of local Roman politics, with its aristocratic, warring families, that determined their selection. No fewer than 205 of them were Italians. The 58 exceptions were 15 Greeks, 15 Frenchmen, six Germans, six Syrians, three North Africans, three Spaniards, two Dalmatians, two Goths, a Thracian, an Englishman...
...Italian Popes of the 15th century were both members of Spain's notorious Borgia family. Alonso de Borgia, elected as Callistus III (1455-58), made the papacy a family affair. So did his nephew Rodrigo, who became Alexander VI in 1492 and named four nephews, as well as his illegitimate son Cesare, Cardinals. In 1503, both father and son fell gravely ill. Alexander died after a week's illness; Cesare survived. It is widely thought that the two master poisoners accidentally partook of the poisoned beverage that they had intended for a rival Cardinal...