Word: papally
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...incense and intrigue of another papal conclave is upon us again. Well, sort of. Pope Benedict XVI is alive and well and attending to his mission as absolute ruler of the Roman Catholic Church for the foreseeable future. But just down the block from St. Peter's Square, church elders - though not all so old, and without a Cardinal among them - have begun gathering for a closed-door meeting to elect the man dubbed the "black pope." That's the moniker historically assigned to the leader of the Jesuit order: for the color of the simple priestly vestments he keeps...
...Jesuits' outgoing Superior General is a soft-spoken Netherlands native named Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, who has served since 1983. The 79-year-old last year became the first ever Jesuit leader to ask for, and receive, papal permission to retire from the post. White-haired and goateed, Kolvenbach has kept a low public profile during his quarter-century reign, but is widely praised for his skills in reestablishing good ties with the Holy See after the run-ins with top Vatican officials of his predecessor, a charismatic Basque-born progressive named Pedro Arrupe...
Cottier insists that this "is not an 'anti-encyclical.'" The papal letter is mostly about Christian hope, and in it, Benedict refers to the lives and ideas of various saints and martyrs to explain that hope: Most of all, Benedict leans on the teachings of St. Augustine, the Pope's personal intellectual and spiritual guide, to illuminate "all the contradictions and hopes" of human existence. "In some way we want life itself, true life, untouched even by death; yet at the same time we do not know the thing towards which we feel driven," the Pope writes. "This unknown 'thing...
Iran has a surprisingly large diplomatic corps at the Vatican (only the Dominican Republic has more diplomats accredited to the Holy See) who have a monthly meeting with papal advisers. But other unofficial discussions, in trattorias and cafes and a variety of Church institutions, are a constant part of the diplomatic workings in Rome. And over recent months, the conversations have centered on the looming showdown over Iran's nuclear program. Says one key Catholic Church player involved in these discussions: "The Pope will speak explicitly only when the conditions call for it. One difference this time [compared with Iraq...
...notion of that much money, power and influence vanishing at a Papal penstroke appears to have been too much for the mythic sensibility of the West, which wanted to believe that the Templars must somehow have survived, adapted, or been subsumed into another, even more secretive trans-national group. Over the centuries, the allegedly still-extant order has been portrayed as malevolent, benign, heroic and occult. Organizations all over the world, without any direct connection, have appropriated its name. (The Freemasons reportedly have an "Order of the Knights of Templar," thus consummating a kind of conspiracy theorist's dream marriage...