Word: pontiff
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...time in a chalice. When one of them is elected Pope (by a two-thirds majority), he expresses his acceptance (if he feels worthy; some do not), chooses a name, dons a white soutane. The Cardinals pay him homage. All the baldachins except that of the new Pontiff are folded back to the walls. To show the crowds outside that "a Pope has been made," the ballots, which previously have been burned in the conclave stove with damp straw (to send up black smoke), are this time burned alone, and a thin wisp of white signals from the chapel chimney...
...Precedent was broken even at the Pope's death, perhaps by his order. Cardinal Pacelli omitted the age-old ceremonial of tapping the Pontiff's forehead with a silver mallet, while calling him by name, to make sure he was dead. †Meaning: badly dressed...
...three orders-of Cardinals which make up the College. Sitting in a row sheltered by the same baldachin (canopy), the Camerlengo and the three deans assumed many of the qualities of a reigning Pope, were entitled to the same genuflections which a Catholic would make to the Pontiff...
...year-old Pontiff would have lived longer, said his physicians, had he not been confined to the Vatican until 1929 when the Lateran Treaty was signed. He remained within the Vatican grounds for seven hot, debilitating summers as a protest against Italian expropriation of papal property...
Died. Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, His Holiness Pope Pius XI, 81, 261st Pope, Bishop of Rome and Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Pri mate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, absolute sovereign of Vatican City, spiritual sovereign of 331,500,000 Roman Catholics; of cardiac asthma and kidney disturbances; in Vatican City...