Word: pontiff
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Ambassador to Italy James D. Zellerbach went to the Vatican, presented Pope Pius XII with 1957's George Washington Carver Memorial Institute Gold Award for the pontiff's "outstanding contribution to the betterment of race relations and human welfare." (1956 winner: D wight D. Eisenhower.) Said His Holiness: "It is not to our humble person this award is directed, but to truth and charity, whose defense is our mission...
Outside in St. Peter's Square a crowd of 30,000 assembled for Pius XII's birthday blessings, shouting "Viva il Papa!" and "Auguri!" (best wishes). There were presents, too, fit for a Pope: a volume chronicling the Pontiff's achievements in chapters titled "The Pope as Writer," "The Pope as Jurist," "The Pope of the Virgin Mary" (by Thomas Merton), "The Pope's Works for Peace," etc.; another book dedicated to him by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences titled Galileo, Unjustly Condemned; a Steuben glass cup from U.S. Cardinal Spellman...
Road to Rome. In 1443, the Pope visited San Marco to dedicate the finished convent. Two years later, the Pontiff called Fra Angelico to Rome to begin the great work of decorating the Vatican. Decorating the Chapel of the Sacrament and the "studio" of the Pope with frescoes (since destroyed), and painting scenes of the lives of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen in the Pope's private chapel were to take up Fra Angelico's time, off and on, for the remaining ten years of his life...
Tactical Affront. Ironically enough, it was under the prompting of Pope Urban VIII that Galileo began Dialogue on the Great World Systems, the masterpiece for which he was to be punished by the Inquisition. Warily checking his signals with the Pontiff. Galileo found that the Pope had only two reservations: i) the Copernican theory must be treated as a hypothesis, not as a certainty, and 2) since God was omnipotent and might create and govern the universe in any way He chose, Galileo was to put forth no proposition which "necessitated" God to operate in any one fixed way. Galileo...
Rome's Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith last week announced the excommunication, three years ago, of Monsignor Li Wei-Kwang, onetime Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Nanking. His offense: "Acting by word and deed against the legitimate authority of the representative of the Supreme Pontiff in China." The excommunication was not published until now, in hopes that the erring priest might mend his ways. Instead, according to Osservatore Romano, Li has recently become "leader and proclaimer among Christians of movements that have the purpose of dividing Catholics and changing the essence of the only church...