Word: pontiff
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...mass, based on the document "Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past," is expected to be an entirely unprecedented action by a remarkable pontiff, urging the faithful and the clergy to honestly face up to those moments in its history when, he believes, the church was not true to its own teachings. The Holocaust may be the most commonly discussed of these moments, but the church's collective mea culpa is expected to cover everything from the Crusades and the Inquisition to its attitude toward Christians of other denominations. Not that each of these sins...
...papal abdication? The commotion overshadowed the announcement that the Pope would travel to the Middle East in March as part of the Jubilee Year, a period for which he has been strenuously preparing. There has been some concern over the image of the Pontiff broadcast over the millennial weekend: one of a visibly weakened man. The vigorous 58-year-old elected in 1978 to challenge communism suffers from the onset of Parkinson's disease, limps and has terrible difficulty negotiating steps. His left arm shakes, at times uncontrollably. His face is rigid, and his speech is slurred...
...pontiff's welcome from ordinary Israelis is likely to be tepid, at best. "The history of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church makes Israelis deeply resentful of the pope," says Beyer. "Despite his efforts to rectify some of the wrongs, many Jews believe official Catholic attitudes contributed directly to the Holocaust, and that the church hasn't made an adequate apology." Even the Palestinian Christian population may have mixed feelings - most Palestinian Christians belong to Orthodox sects, whose relationship to the Vatican is traditionally hostile, particularly in relation to conflicts over control of Jerusalem's Christian shrines. The Israel trip...
...permit freedom of religion. But that's not the same as freedom of belief or freedom from government interference. Thus while China has officially produced 1,000 Catholic clerics in the past 18 years, all government-certified Catholics--including Bishop Jin of Shanghai--must forswear allegiance to the Roman Pontiff. Those who refuse must worship underground, ministered to by fugitive priests. Beijing has little patience with those who say the Kingdom of Heaven has precedence over the rulers of the Middle Kingdom. Peter Xu Yongze, an underground Protestant minister, has been arrested three times for suggesting that God might...
...Taiwan?s refusal to back down from its attempts to be treated as a separate state and by an increasing challenge from hard-liners in the Communist Party to put the brakes on an economic reform program which has dramatically increased social instability in China. But barring the pontiff may not help Beijing?s long-term goals. "People in Hong Kong view this as a sign of increasing intervention and control by Beijing in violation of the ?One Country, Two Systems? principle under which the territory rejoined the mainland," says Dowell. And "One Country, Two Systems," of course, had been...