Word: pontiff
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...name was unusual?and unprecedented. No Pope had ever adopted a double name; none had selected a first-of-its-kind name in a millennium. Apparently, the new Pontiff wanted to signal originality and also a bond of continuity with his two immediate predecessors: the reformer, John XXIII, and the moderator, Paul VI. Or was he evoking their New Testament forebears...
...election's speed was surprising, so was the identity of the 263rd Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. In the first days after Paul's death, Luciani, 65, Patriarch of Venice, had been mentioned only as a remote compromise candidate if the conclave reached a deadlock. Now he was in the window, a frail-looking, slight, bespectacled figure in ponifical vestments, lifting his hands gingerly in the papal salute, offering blessing with a brisk gesture of his right hand, nodding smilingly at the excited crowd below...
...Said Baltimore's liberal Lawrence Cardinal Shehan: "Perhaps we can take it as a sign of his independence." "The name is of great importance," said José Miguez Bonino, a Protestant liberation theologian in Argentina and an honorary president of the World Council of Churches. "It shows that the new Pontiff is ready to continue with the program of reforms launched by the Vatican Council...
...when he first joined the assembly of waiting Cardinals in Rome, another shortly before the conclave. Then, as the conclave begins, he will take a third oath along with his fellow Cardinals, pledging yet again to observe secrecy in any matter "pertaining to the election of the Roman Pontiff," under pain of excommunication...
...conclave. Then, with the crowds waiting in St. Peter's Square, the senior Cardinal Deacon will step out on the central balcony of St. Peter's and declare, "Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam!" (I announce to you a great joy. We have a Pope!) The new Pontiff, the Cardinal will continue, is "the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord Cardinal --, who has taken the name --." At that moment the world will learn the identity of the new Pope...