Word: pope
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Despite such sweet and sour experiences (including one in 1988 that produced the memorable tabloid headline GAYS PROTEST VATICAN BIGGY), the Pope likes New York and what it stands for. "I think he's really fascinated by the city and what it represents," says Raphaela Schmid, a Rome-based German with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who knows him. "It's about people being two things at once, like Italian Americans or Chinese Americans. He's interested in that idea of coexistence...
That observation captures an often ignored side of the German-born Pope Benedict XVI, 80, on the eve of his first pontifical visit to the U.S. The trip, which begins in Washington on April 15 and ends in New York City on April 20, will present most Americans with their first opportunity to take the "new" Pope's measure. Some American Catholics already feel they are familiar with Benedict and his values and coexistence is not an association that immediately crops up. Benedict clearly lacks his predecessor's charismatic affability and sense of the dramatic gesture. His conservative writings suggest...
...vision of an America we sometimes lose sight of: an optimistic and diverse but essentially pious society in which faiths and a faith-based conversation on social issues are kept vital by the Founding Fathers' decision to separate church and state. It's not a stretch to say the Pope sees in the U.S.--or in some kind of idealized version of it--a civic model and even an inspiration to his native Europe, whose Muslim immigrants raise the question of religious and political coexistence in the starkest terms. Says David Gibson, author of The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict...
...Nixon to play the "China card" against the Soviets, but that only led to nearly two decades of détente. The only effective way to bring about the end of totalitarian regimes is direct confrontation. The U.S.S.R. fell because world leaders like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II confronted that state and its ideology head-on. Richard Kade, Sunnyvale, Calif...
...Holy See's diplomacy in the Muslim world stretches well beyond the Pope's words. High on the agenda is the Vatican push for the right to build Christian churches in Muslim-dominated countries. Officials in Rome have been heartened over the past two weeks with news of the first Catholic church opening in Doha, Qatar, and negotiations underway to potentially build one in Saudi Arabia. Still, Church officials say that the question of religious freedom must ultimately also mean freedom to change religion, and note that some Muslims insist that conversion from Islam is apostate, and punishable by death...