Word: papal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...says Navarro, the papal spokesman and confidant: "If you say, 'Holy Father, did you enjoy your lunch?' he will say yes. But if you ask him what he just ate, he couldn't tell you." John Paul is often too engrossed in talk and thought to pay attention to food. Amid intense conversation, he may push his plate away and fiddle with the cutlery, eyes closed, while concentrating on the speaker's words. He listens and responds. At lunch one day, some of the Pope's advisers started talking about the violence of the Serbs in Bosnia. The Pope interjected...
...minutes you forget you are talking to the Pope." For visiting bishops with problems to share, he can turn on the charm, singing and joking -- although his humor runs more to irony and good-natured kidding. After the dissident Swiss theologian Hans Kung was censured for a book questioning papal infallibility, John Paul commented, without malice, "And I'm sure Kung wrote that infallibly...
John Paul's dissatisfaction with some of the church's traditional priestly operatives -- like the Jesuits, whom he perceived until recently as becoming too liberal -- has led him to encourage lay Catholic movements such as Opus Dei. (Papal spokesman Navarro is a member.) He has declared this controversial organization a personal prelature, which means that it is exempt from the jurisdiction of local bishops and reports directly to Rome. The Pope has also given warm encouragement to a new religious order, the Legionaries of Christ, which some conservatives see as a replacement for the Jesuits of old. Members...
Indisputably a newsmaker, Pope John Paul II can be a reluctant man in the news. It tells you something that he admires Pius IX, the 19th century Pope who withdrew into his palace after Italy seized from the Vatican both Rome and the papal states. Reclusive is no word for John Paul, but the widely traveled figure whom TIME has made Man of the Year is still deeply and deliberately private. Meaning someone who almost never grants on-the-record interviews. Meaning, journalistically, a tough nut to crack...
...morning of Dec. 7 in Rome, a group of TIME editors and correspondents confronted that challenge firsthand. They were glumly assembled in expectation of a papal audience they would share with roughly 7,000 others. Days earlier, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls had reluctantly informed Paris bureau chief Thomas Sancton that His Holiness would decline TIME's request for a private meeting. While pleased to be chosen as Man of the Year, John Paul didn't wish to appear to have collaborated on the project. The Time team could have front-row seats at one of the Pope's massive...