Word: popes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...then in 1991 Centesimus annus came in, a 25,000-word encyclical on the 100th anniversary of Leo XIII's Rerum novarum, the momentous condemnation of liberalism and materialism. Materialism meant then what it means today. By liberalism, Pope Leo had in mind contemporary movements that sought, in the name of "modernism," to free human beings from traditional attachments to church and family. In the centennial encyclical, Pope John Paul reiterated his frequent admonitions. The worker or manager who reports to duty at the shop every morning inflamed by the desire to make a better widget and sell more...
...traveled in virtually every country in the world. One supposes that, notwithstanding, he is not by personal experience familiar with the kind of thing one can pick up to read in urban kiosks or turn to view on late-night television. But you'd still deduce that Pope John would not be surprised by anything he read or saw: he has been exposed at very close quarters to the ingenuity of God's creatures, no less creative in depravity than in goodness...
What does surprise is the near virginal conviction of this sophisticated Pole that Providence has kept a watchful eye on him. His recovery in 1981 from an assassin's bullet the Pope would probably not term miraculous only because fastidious Catholic theology frowns on the use of that word, except when the theological department of weights and measures has been there with all its paraphernalia of skepticism and given an O.K. Still, he is known to believe that the good Lord had a hand in his survival, and he is said to believe that he is fated to be Pope...
...case, people will ask, what is it that Pope John Paul II uniquely brings to the millennium? Almost all who have experienced him at close quarters understand the special luminosity he radiates when surrounded live by a million people. But the great historical backdrop of his splendor fades. He was the student and manual laborer from Wadowice in Poland who became the first non-Italian Pope in 450 years. His was the dominant spiritual presence in the final round of the great revolutionary challenge that began soon after the turn of the century and sought no less than to alter...
...great numbers to see him in Denver in 1993 will, many of them, be alive when John Paul II is dead in 50 years, and their recall will be sensual. I saw him in January, with the usual million people, including Fidel Castro. There was some trepidation about the Pope's health at the Sunday Mass. The Pope was cautiously introduced by Havana's Jaime Cardinal Ortega. We heard then the voice of the Pope. Not very expressive, but the Spanish he spoke was well turned and clearly enunciated. In a matter of seconds he communicated his special, penetrating, transcendent...