Word: pontiff
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...traced the sign of the Cross on their brows, he sometimes seemed at a loss for words. When a woman cried out in Bengali, he asked his guide, Mother Teresa, to translate. "She's saying she's very, very alone, and she's telling you, 'Come back again.' " The Pontiff, his eyes misting, grasped the woman's head and gently kissed her forehead. Emerging later into the teeming streets, he seemed emotionally drained. "I cannot fully answer all your questions," John Paul told the gathered crowd. "I cannot take away all your pain...
...that of its estimated 106 million followers in the Soviet satellites, Pope John Paul II has often bluntly denounced antireligious acts. Last week the Pope issued a 47-page encyclical honoring Cyril and Methodius, two 9th century saints who were missionaries to the Slavs. In it the first Slavic Pontiff made a plea for freedom of worship in Eastern Europe. Praying to God on behalf of the Slavs, he declared, "May they follow, in conformity with their own conscience, the voice of your call." John Paul noted, however, that the church posed no threat to any state. Continuing his prayer...
...Pontiff's circumspect language, said Czechoslovak Josef Cardinal Tomko, a member of the Pope's inner circle in Rome, was dictated by the "hope of receiving from the other side a response equally conciliatory, human and constructive." Lately there have been small but significant signs of change. Last year the Czechoslovak weekly newspaper Tribuna called John Paul "one of the most reactionary Popes of this century." But last May, another state- controlled paper, Katolicke Noviny, lauded John Paul as the "untiring hero of international detente." The seeming thaw in East bloc-Vatican relations was not in evidence last year when...
...loftier matters on his mind. "I am Jesus Christ!" Agca shouted. "I am omnipotent. I announce the end of the world. All will be destroyed." The bizarre outburst in the opening moments of the trial of three Bulgarians and five Turks accused of conspiring to kill the Pontiff made one thing clear: Italian prosecutors may face a difficult task in convincing the six-member jury that their star witness is credible...
...hierarchy. It was the first time a Pope has done so in public. He acknowledged the local unrest and disappointment over his February naming of conservative Bishop Johannes ter Schure, 62. "Believe me, brothers and sisters, this suffering on account of the church grieves me," said the Pontiff. But "in the final analysis, the Pope has to make the decisions...