Word: papal
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...showed last week that he was no friend of anti-Communists who violate human rights. During a private meeting at Guatemala's National Palace, he chastised the President, General Efrain Rios Montt, for executing six men, who had been convicted of subversive activity, on the eve of the papal visit. The Pontiff saved some of his strongest criticism of injustice for a Mass attended by President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti...
...Pope's arrival in Nicaragua turned into a political tug-of-war between church hierarchy and state. Managua's Archbishop Miguel Obando y Brando, an outspoken critic of the regime, complained that the Sandinista government's plans to use publicly-owned transportation to shuttle Nicaraguans to sites along the papal route were an attempt to control who would be able to see John Paul. Some parish priests urged the faithful to ignore government timetables determining when they could leave for the Mass and instead to form their own religious processions...
...Cardenal Martinez, a priest, was in the official receiving line along with other government ministers. He was wearing his typical rustic white cotton shirt, baggy blue work pants and a black beret. As the Pontiff approached, Cardenal whipped off his beret and dropped to his knees to kiss the papal ring. But the Pope appeared to withhold his hand. Wagging his finger at Cardenal, John Paul gave him a public scolding that television cameras carried around the world. The Pope told Cardenal: "You must straighten out your position with the church...
...Although church leaders give Rios Montt credit for bringing a rare measure of honesty to the country's government, his brutal crackdown on insurgents has drawn deserved fire from the Catholic hierarchy. Some Catholic leaders saw his decision to proceed with the six executions on the eve of the papal visit as a deliberate affront to the Vatican. Warned the apostolic nuncio to Guatemala City: "The deplorable incident which took place so near to the projected visit of Pope John Paul II is considered by the Holy See as incredible for its possible grave repercussions at the world and national...
...also implicated in the Walesa plot to the magistrate in charge of the Scricciolo investigation, Judge Ferdinando Imposimato. After questioning Agca, he has now pieced together the details of the alleged plot to kill Walesa. In addition to naming Agca and the three Bulgarian officials implicated in the papal shooting, Imposimato issued official warnings last week to Scricciolo, Ivan Donchev, a former second secretary at the Bulgarian embassy who is now in Sofia, and Salvatore Scordo, a former union employee in the same union as Scricciolo. The seven alleged conspirators reportedly concluded that a shooting attempt was too risky...