Word: pontiff
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...suffer." That was the answer Pope John Paul II gave last week when newsmen aboard his Alitalia DC-10 jet asked him to explain the purpose of his visit to Central America. The remark may have seemed self-evident, but nothing so eloquently expressed why the 62-year-old Pontiff, who had already survived one close brush with death and a second attempt on his life last spring in Portugal, should feel compelled to risk his personal safety and the authority of his office to go on a pilgrimage to the most politically explosive strip of territory in the Western...
...cease-fire while John Paul is in the country. As it is, the Pope will have to make peace within the church. Conservative supporters of the government fear that he is coming to make a plea for "dialogue" with the rebels, while some proponents of liberation theology see the Pontiff as a friend of the ruling "oligarchy." Caught in the middle is Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, the temporary administrator of the Archdiocese in the capital city of San Salvador...
Would the KGB have called on the Bulgarian security service to stage just such an operation in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981? The Kremlin certainly had a motive for wanting Pope John Paul II out of the way. Since his election in 1978, the Pontiff has shown particular concern for the plight of Communist bloc Catholics, and also set about improving ties with Eastern Orthodox churches in the region. Moscow has long been suspicious of any such religious activity, fearing that it might stir up nationalist sentiments, especially in the Baltic republics and the Western Ukraine...
...Pope was a little more direct in his remarks, blasting the Mafioso by name as "operators of aberrant manifestations of criminality." Hardly an all-out frontal assault, but then this pontiff has never been one for drastic action, Rather, he concluded with a hopeful vision of the future. "Delightful Palermo open haven, secure haven, live in serenity and peace...
...Mass in Madrid's Plaza de Lima before more than a million cheering spectators, one of the largest crowds he has drawn in any of his 16 trips abroad. Standing beneath a 30-ft.-high cross on a podium draped in white and yellow papal bunting, the Pontiff put forward in exceptionally strong terms his conservative position on marriage and the family. The Socialists have proposed legalizing abortion in cases where the mother's life is endangered or the fetus appears abnormal. Said John Paul II: "The murder of an innocent never can be legitimized." Turning...