Word: pontiff
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Pope John Paul II was the first pontiff ever to visit Brazil, and he was hugely popular here. But each time he visited his adoring flock, he came in the knowledge that his Church was losing followers and influence at a frightening rate. Between 1980 and 2000, the proportion of Catholics in the world's largest Catholic country fell from...
...stanching of the flow of believers out of the Catholic Church is great news for the new Pontiff - and an unexpected one, given that the decline has been going on since records began in 1872. "The surprise is the stabilization of the number of Catholics," said Marcelo Neri, an economist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a top Rio business school who helped author a study based on the government data. "Catholics haven't attracted more faithful, but they are no longer losing their flock...
...alike to his provocative September speech in Germany about faith and reason, though even that died down with his well-received visit to Turkey in November. But over the past few months back in Rome, there has been a steady flow of criticism of the now 80-year-old pontiff, much of which also relates to his rigid views on doctrine, such as his speaking out against an Italian Parliament bill to allow civil unions for gay couples. But perhaps the most visceral criticism came when the Church denied Catholic funeral rites to an Italian victim of Lou Gehrig...
...that would allow the more widespread practice of the traditional Latin Mass, which was all but shelved with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone recently confirmed to Le Figaro newspaper that this motu proprio, or personal initiative of the Pontiff, will allow any priest to say the mass according to the old Tridentine rite (which is delivered in Latin with the priest facing the altar, his back to the congregation), rather than have to seek approval from the local bishop as is now required...
...softening of the condom ban to allow for distribution in AIDS-ravaged Africa. The release last month of the Pope's final document on what had seemed to be a convivial and intellectually open October 2005 bishops' meeting on the Eucharist is a good example of the Pontiff's approach. According to a senior Church official who participated: "He took all that debate of the Synod, and then gave us a document that simply defends the status quo." This same official acknowledges a bit of past excessive optimism on Benedict: "People were hoping that with his intellectual acumen and understanding...