Word: pontiff
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Most official meetings with a Pope are choreographed sessions during which practiced formalities and prepared formulations eliminate any chance of missteps. But last week at Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence outside Rome, John Paul II held a remarkably open, unrehearsed exchange with Jewish leaders, the first by a Pontiff in modern times. By every account, the warm 75-minute encounter went well beyond smoothing ruffled feathers and gave substantive promise of uplifting the troubled relationship between Roman Catholics and Jews...
...welcomed Pope John Paul as a dramatic new personality on the world stage. The inevitable excitement about the first papal tour of the U.S. overshadowed the stern admonitions that John Paul delivered on church teachings and discipline. Since then, the Pontiff and Vatican officials have taken a number of widely noted actions to apply those admonitions. Some of the most controversial: temporarily limiting the authority of Seattle's liberal Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, firing the Rev. Charles Curran from his professorship of moral theology at the Catholic University of America, threatening nuns with expulsion for declaring that pro-choice opinions...
American Catholicism -- huge, wealthy and influential -- is crucial to John Paul' s campaign to restore church discipline. But a TIME poll shows that most Catholics, while respecting their Pontiff, disagree with him on a number of key moral issues. -- Cities that will be host to the visit agonize about logistical problems, protests and tacky commercialism. See RELIGION...
...Pope's gesture seems to have cleared up concern about the atmosphere that would prevail there. "It was a thoughtful letter, one charged with emotion," said Theodore Ellenoff, president of the American Jewish Committee. Participants in next week's papal exchanges were also pleased. The Pontiff has asked for 90 minutes of open, frank dialogue on Catholic-Jewish relations, without set speeches. "We were told the Pope wanted a man-to-man, heart-to- heart discussion," said Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee. "We took it as a sign of good faith...
...Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, retaining some reservations. "Up to now, perhaps, Jews did not play an important role in the Pope's vision of the world." In fact, John Paul has made a number of significant overtures to Jews. His 1979 journey to Auschwitz was the first by a Pontiff to a concentration camp. His visit last year to a Rome synagogue made him the first known Pope to enter a Jewish house of worship since St. Peter. But last May he beatified a nun, Edith Stein, a convert from Judaism, as a heroic Christian martyr. Jews had protested that...