Word: pontiff
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...pilgrimage, Pope Benedict XVI insisted, not a political outing. The pontiff's just-completed stay in Austria was built around a visit to Mariazell, an 850-year-old shrine to Mary in the foothills of the Alps, just over two hours south of Vienna. And though Benedict used his three-day trip to touch on some familiar hot-button issues both inside and outside his Church - abortion, euthanasia, the so-called "de-Christianization" of Europe - he did so in a context and spirit that matched the humble "just-a-pilgrimage" billing he announced just before takeoff from Rome on Friday...
...Pope's press secretary, Father Federico Lombardi, emphasized that this trip is meant to be more a papal pilgrimage than a pastoral visit, with the stated purpose to celebrate the 850th anniversary on Saturday of the shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. "My voyage is not political," the pontiff told reporters just before takeoff. "I want to join in with other faithful in this act of unity that such a journey brings." Nevertheless, Austrian Catholics will be looking to their pontiff for words of encouragement as the nation's Church continues to recover from a sex abuse scandal...
...decree, called a motu proprio, or personal initiative of the Pontiff, was made public Saturday along with an explanatory letter to the world's bishops acknowledging the recent "news reports" and "confusion" about the lifting of restrictions for access to the old rite. Known as the Tridentine rite - delivered in Latin with the priest usually facing the altar, his back to the congregation - the old Mass (though never banned) had effectively been replaced, following the mid-1960s reforms of the Second Vatican Council, by a liturgy recited in the vernacular. Some Vatican insiders caution that Benedict's new ruling will...
...BRAZIL $0.20 Cost of a month's supply of birth-control pills, under a proposed subsidy on the contraceptive 150,000 Estimated number of Brazilians who attended an open-air mass with Pope Benedict XVI during his May visit to the world's largest Catholic country; the Pontiff has condemned abortion and contraception...
...clear if the phrase from the draft speech was actually the Pope's or that of then Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, it was excised from the official version released by the Vatican. It was an early sign that there might be problems in the way the new pontiff and his aides respond to diplomatic crises...