Word: papally
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Gorbachev also agreed to reopen diplomatic relations with the Vatican and discussed a possible papal visit to the Soviet Union sometime in the future. John Paul hedged on that, making his acceptance conditional upon some evidence of real improvement in the situation of Soviet Catholics. But the Pope did offer his endorsement of perestroika, all the while pressing home his "expectation" that Ukrainian Catholics would be allowed to exercise their faith fully and openly. The Ukrainian Church, which follows the Eastern liturgy but claims the Pope as its spiritual leader, was banned and driven underground by Stalin...
When the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV decided to seek the pardon of Pope Gregory VII in 1077, he stood barefoot for three days in the snow outside the papal quarters in Canossa, Italy. Gorbachev's concordat with the church was no less significant in its way. But there was a crucial difference: as is so often the case with Gorbachev, he achieved his reconciliation without humiliation. As he had done before, the Soviet leader let the ongoing crisis of the Communist system serve as an opportunity to push his nation toward a broader vision of the future. "We need...
...most contentious religious problem within the Soviet Union concerns the 4 million or so Catholics in the western Ukraine, whose plight is a key agenda item in this week's talks between Gorbachev and the Pope. Friendlier contacts, and a papal visit to the U.S.S.R., cannot occur unless this, the world's largest underground religious community, is restored. Under Stalin, all Ukrainian Catholic bishops were imprisoned and a fraudulent 1946 synod dissolved their jurisdictions, handing over 4,100 churches to Russian Orthodoxy. The majority of the Catholic priests rejected the takeover and either were arrested or went into hiding...
Calm had returned by the time Pope John Paul II appeared. In the first major papal statement on AIDS, the Pontiff called on governments "to develop and carry out a worldwide plan to combat AIDS and drug addiction." He urged patients not to despair and condemned "every form of discrimination" against them. But he warned against "morally illicit" methods of preventing AIDS -- a clear allusion to condoms -- and spoke of "abuse of sexuality," referring to homosexuality, as a cause of the spreading of AIDS. He said the crisis results from "immunodeficiency" in values...
This outburst of randiness may have cost Giulio his Roman career. Raphael was dead, and his former assistants were now maneuvering on their own for the big commissions. But with Luther raging against Vatican corruption and a reformist chill blowing through the papal court, Pope Clement VII was not going to make a pornographer his official painter. At this point Baldassare Castiglione, Raphael's friend and author of The Courtier, fixed Giulio up with his job in Mantua...