Word: pope
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...with Wojtyla's belief that a prayer by the Capuchin monk had cured a friend's cancer in 1962 - that helps explain why Padre Pio was fast-tracked for sainthood once Wojtyla had risen to the papacy as John Paul II. But some may now wonder if the current Pope, the cerebral and professorial Benedict XVI, has the same affinity for the popular Italian wonder-worker who died...
...Padre Pio, which had been put on display in a glass casket, with a special silicon mask - beard, bushy eyebrows and all - created by London-based wax museum artisans. Everyone knows what John Paul II felt about Padre Pio. But how can Benedict, the intellectually rigorous theologian, dubbed "the Pope of Reason," sanction such widespread belief in faith-healing and emotional attachments to icons and relics...
Those who know the current Pope and have worked with the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger cannot recall in his extensive writings anything specific about Padre Pio. The only apparent reference to the miracle worker in the three-year papacy of Benedict XVI is a rather straightforward 2006 discourse Benedict gave in Rome to mark the 50th anniversary of a hospital founded by the monk. "Emulate him," the Pope told worshipers in St. Peter's Square, "in order to help all to live a profound spiritual experience, centered on contemplation of the Crucified Christ...
Close observers of Benedict, however, argue that his focus on reconciling reason and faith does not favor one over the other. While he may not dwell on the popular Padre Pio, the Pope, explains Raphaela Schmid, a Rome-based German philosopher and student of Ratzinger's writings, recognizes that Catholicism's more popular manifestations and the religion's search for an intellectual basis "both have a place in the Church." Schmid says that Benedict has explained why it is "not irrational" to venerate the saints, or believe in miracles. "What you see in this is the language of the heart...
...Colombian-born Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo was a staunch advocate of the Roman Catholic Church's conservative policies, opposing abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage and contraception--at one point calling into question the efficacy of condoms in preventing the spread of HIV. Considered a possible candidate for Pope before Benedict XVI succeeded John Paul II in 2005, López Trujillo was deeply wary of leftist liberation theology and its influence on Latin American Catholicism. "I don't believe that in Latin America, Marxism has any possibilities," he said in the 1970s. "Nor does a capitalism that turns...