Word: john
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...church?s hand is friendlier and its arm longer under the "foreign" pope, its embrace under this traveling salesman in his Popemobile is no less conditional. The enormous charisma of the man has made zealots of the converted and converts of the heathen, but John Paul II has brooked no heretics. There is some debate over the pope's adherence to or deconstruction of Vatican II, a reform council convened in the early '60s (at which young Bishop Wojtyla first made his mark by drafting a document declaring the primacy of religious freedom, even for non-Catholics...
...next pope has already begun, if in hushed tones. Carlo Maria Martini, the 72-year-old Archbishop of Milan, is a favorite with the liberals; fellow Italian Camillo Ruini, 68, is a coalition-friendly conservative. A Brazilian, 73-year-old Lucia Moreira Neves, is said to be John Paul?s own favorite -? and most likely to continue the aggressively internationalist trend that this pontiff has begun. "There are two lines of thinking in the Vatican right now about who it might be," says TIME Rome bureau chief Greg Burke. "One is that the mold has been forever broken, that...
...adoring crowds and all the political world-shaking, though, John Paul has not been able to solve all of the Catholic Church?s problems with modernity. Quite possibly, he has created some. John Paul II has appointed more than three quarters of the College of Cardinals that will choose his successor, as well as a great number of bishops worldwide who will one day become cardinals ?- ensuring that this pope?s strict conservatism will likely dominate church doctrine for generations to come...
...Membership in the Roman Catholic Church is at 1 billion and on the rise, but its market share of the world?s population is shrinking. In Africa and Asia, the church?s "workforce" ?- the number of priests and nuns -? is increasing, a sure sign of John Paul?s road-warrior evangelizing and media savvy. But in North America and Europe, the number of the truly committed is decreasing, which may be a sign that his staunch refusal to compromise is turning First World Catholics into something of a spectator church, professing faith but ignoring doctrine. Such developments lead to dilution...
...John Paul brought the Vatican to parts of the world that were beginning to doubt its interest in them, he nevertheless brought a Vatican whose terms remain strict and its own. It is a Catholicism that stands, on the ideological spectrum, far to the right of what many of even its devotees would like it to be, and thanks to John Paul?s appointees it is not likely to budge. In answer to the forces of liberalism, John Paul II has stacked the deck...