Word: pontiff
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Once the Ukrainian problem is resolved, assuming the Gorbachev-inspired liberalization continues, the Roman Pontiff can pursue his overarching vision of reunion with the whole of Eastern Orthodoxy. The churches of the East and West are like "two lungs of a single body," John Paul is fond of saying. Religious negotiations have made surprisingly brisk progress on the ecclesiastical and theological bases for union...
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...
...Europe last week. First, with the remarkable assent of the Kremlin, Pope John Paul II named a new bishop for Belorussia, a Soviet republic that borders Poland. It was the first such appointment in 63 years; the region's last Catholic bishop was sent to prison in 1927. The Pontiff then named three new bishops and regularized the status of a fourth to give hard-line Czechoslovakia its fullest hierarchy since the Communists launched a postwar effort to liquidate Catholicism. Coming only one week after the Holy See established diplomatic ties with Poland, the latest moves point to a growing...
...buildings, established their own bimonthly magazine and, as of three weeks ago, are producing a TV show that is seen each Sunday. The man responsible for the new religious freedoms, Mikhail Gorbachev, will visit Italy in November and is almost certain to pay a historic visit to the Polish Pontiff. It would be the first meeting ever between a Pope and a Soviet leader...
Houphouet-Boigny considers the basilica a gift not only to Africa but also to the Vatican. Though he discussed the project in an audience with Pope John Paul II last April, the Pontiff will not come to dedicate the church in September. (If he ever does visit, John Paul will stay in a huge residence built especially for him, complete with swimming pool, 20 rooms and a 40-room mansion for his entourage...