Word: pontiff
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...socialist town of Nowa Huta was reluctantly allowed by a government that witlessly believed a deterioration of faith would follow a deterioration of facilities. After he became Pope in 1978, John Paul II did not forget the frustration. Preparing for his first trip back to Poland, in 1979, the Pontiff took advantage of his countrymen's continued fervor in opposition to Communism's ongoing freeze. In negotiating with a beleaguered regime that did not want to appear to be blocking the papal journey, John Paul forced a promise to end the near total 40-year ban on new churches...
...Americans do not act, he vowed, "Rome will." But a ranking Vatican official said no quick response is anticipated. Pope John Paul's thinking may become known in February, when the first of several contingents of American bishops arrives in Rome for periodic in-person reports to the Pontiff...
Some of the year' s most unforgettable photographs focus on a superpower summit, a stock- market panic and a congressional probe into a scandal that shook a government. Others are on a more human scale: a Pontiff embracing a young AIDS victim, a preacher fallen from grace, a wide- eyed little girl rescued from a well in Texas. All are presented in a 24- page portfolio...
...appearances. Still, the numbers along his motorcade routes were often surprisingly small, thinned perhaps by fears of the crush and heavy security, or the it's-on-TV-anyway mentality; even on his visit to Detroit, only 30,000 turned out in the largely Polish community of Hamtramck. The Pontiff had made special contact for the first time with varied groups of U.S. Catholics -- Hispanics, American Indians, AIDS sufferers -- but his delivery was often wooden (English is not easy for him), and he was best on the few occasions when he could depart from ceremonial mechanics...
Without mentioning names, John Paul continued his tough tone by taking direct aim at liberal moral theologians like Father Charles Curran, who is fighting his ouster from the Catholic University of America. Theologians, the - Pontiff said, must be subject to church authority, and bishops should make clear that "dissent and confrontation" are not acceptable from church scholars. John Paul also urged the prelates to step up efforts to "safeguard and promote" doctrinal orthodoxy at church-affiliated colleges...