Word: papally
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Some may even note a snub of sorts. John Paul visited San Giovanni Rotondo in 1987 to mark 100 years since Padre Pio's birth. But Benedict is making his second papal visit to the Puglia region in June, and has left the town off his itinerary both times...
Benedict's arrival at Ground Zero comes seven years after new, unspeakable violence, with its own religious dynamic. There was neither rain nor rainbow for this papal pilgrimage, but after five days of sunshine, the air was raw Sunday and a heavy fog covered even the top floors of the much smaller buildings that surrounded the massive crater left by the 19 followers of a blind faith...
...resurrection, stood above a small reflecting pool and a symbolic plot of earth. We soon realized that there would be only the participants of the ceremony - 24 victims, survivors and first responders, a few local civic and church dignitaries - and our press pool, and so unlike some of these papal media appointments, we would be just a few yards away with a direct view...
...bagpipes from above mixed with the sorrowful tune of a single cello player below. Benedict stepped out near the bottom of the ramp to walk the final 35 yards. Amidst all the surrounding concrete and work equipment, he looked particularly slight of build in simple, but heavy white papal vestments for the cold morning. His normally brisk walk was even brisker than usual, seemingly eager to arrive before the pascal candle to pray. Silently he knelt down, and remained on his knees, eyes open, but otherwise lost in his prayer for more than two minutes...
...Papal visits are pastoral visits - that is, they are concerned with the encouraging and healing of a Pope's flock, not the formation of policy. And yet a pastoral statement as affecting as this one is something of a promissory note for subsequent action. At a TIME magazine luncheon for Cardinal William Levada, Benedict's successor as head of the Vatican doctrinal office (the one in charge of the most egregious sex abuse cases), we asked whether the Vatican intended to deal with the one part of the sex scandal that seems outstanding: beyond attending to victims and taking abusers...