Word: luciani
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...Belluno, he began his pastoral ladder climbing, first to vicar general of that diocese, then, in 1958, to Bishop of Vittorio Veneto, another local diocese subject to Venice. When two local priests there were accused of piling up heavy debts and overdrawing their checking accounts, Luciani summoned his 400 priests for a stern sermon. The church, he reminded them, was to be identified with the poor Then he paid the debts of his free-spending priests out of diocesan funds...
...Pope Paul VI named Luciani Patriarch of Venice,* one of the most prestigious posts in the Italian church. Four years later came the red hat of Cardinal. In Venice, a vast archdiocese that numbered 3.6 million Catholics, he forthrightly declared that "the true treasures of the church are the poor." He thereupon authorized the clergy to dispose of church gold and jewels to raise funds to aid the handicapped...
...Luciani, who lived in the patriarchal palace next to St. Mark's Basilica, loved to exercise by walking or riding a bicycle through the city's streets! Jesuit Theologian Herbert Ryan of Los Angeles' Loyola Marymount University recalls how, carrying a cake in a pink box for the participants, Luciani once walked 25 minutes from his residence to the meeting of an ecumenical commission...
...favorite saint, Ryan says, is Venice's Pope St. Pius X, whom Luciani has often cited in his sermons. (Pius X is often remembered as the Pope who condemned Modernism, but that act was largely the work of his eminence grise Cardinal Merry del Val; Luciani, though, has revered Pius as the man who encouraged frequent reception of Communion and attendance at Mass.) The Venetian connection...
also binds in Luciani's love of music. He especially admires the works of a Venetian baroque master, a priest named Antonio Vivaldi...