Word: pontiff
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...things to come? That's what residents of Hong Kong are asking after Beijing put the kibosh on Pope John Paul II?s planned visit to the former British colony later this year. Chinese officials told the Union of Asian Catholic News Agencies Monday that Beijing blocked the pontiff?s plans to visit the territory -- where an estimated 370,000 Catholics reside -- on the grounds that the Vatican maintains diplomatic ties with Taiwan. In more confident times, China?s Communist Party leadership may have been prepared to overlook such a detail, but Beijing is in no mood to entertain unpredictable...
...year-old Archbishop of Milan, is a favorite with the liberals; fellow Italian Camillo Ruini, 68, is a coalition-friendly conservative. A Brazilian, 73-year-old Lucia Moreira Neves, is said to be John Paul?s own favorite -? and most likely to continue the aggressively internationalist trend that this pontiff has begun. "There are two lines of thinking in the Vatican right now about who it might be," says TIME Rome bureau chief Greg Burke. "One is that the mold has been forever broken, that the next pope could be from anywhere," he says. "The other is that...
...have connections. A mystic with blood on his hands was scheduled to move a step closer to becoming a saint this week with Pope John Paul II's beatification of the Capuchin friar known as PADRE PIO. The cleric, who died in 1968, is a favorite of the Pontiff's and a cultlike figure to many other Catholics. Last year 7 million pilgrims--more than went to Lourdes--trekked to the remote hillside village of Italy's San Giovanni Rotondo, where he's buried; the village bustles with the construction of hotels and a church that will seat...
...sought out by believers, including, in 1947, a Polish priest named Karol Wojtyla, who reportedly was told he'd someday be Pope. As Cracow's auxiliary bishop, Wojtyla asked Padre Pio to pray for a friend with cancer; she recovered, and is still alive. In 1983 the Pontiff put him on the path to sainthood, and the final step of canonization could come within the next decade...
...extent of tension between the Rumania's Orthodox Church and its Catholic minority is underscored by a recent agreement that clergy from the two churches would refrain from trading insults and punches. With much of the Orthodox world perceiving itself as under attack in Yugoslavia, the best the pontiff may be able to hope for is to avoid a further deterioration in the relationship. After all, starting over afresh isn't always easy after a thousand-year divorce...