Word: popes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...When Pope John Paul II stepped into Rome's central synagogue on April 13, 1986, the man in white was met by a thunderclap of applause. After centuries of Jews suffering through pogroms, ghettos, Nazi death camps and arm's-length-at-best cohabitation with Christians, the first-ever papal visit to a Jewish house of worship - entering the synagogue side by side with Rome's avuncular chief Rabbi Elio Toaff - was much more than a photo op. It was a shared embrace to begin to heal the wounds of history...
...indeed, when John Paul's successor, Benedict XVI, crosses the Tiber River on Sunday to visit that same synagogue, he will be dogged by a new dispute about the past: the controversy over the Vatican's decision last month to push for possible sainthood for World War II-era Pope Pius XII, whom some Jewish groups and scholars blame for not doing enough to try to halt the Holocaust. Because of this and other tensions in the five years of his papacy, Benedict may be met by slightly more tepid applause from his Jewish hosts. (See pictures of the Vatican...
...Italy's leading rabbis, Giuseppe Laras, said he would boycott the service, citing a number of sore points with the Pope, most notably his decision to reactivate Pius XII's sainthood dossier, which Benedict himself had put on hold three years ago to await more historical study. "The Pope's visit to the Rome synagogue is a negative fact," Laras, head of the Italian Rabbinic Assembly, told the German-Jewish community newspaper Juedische Allgemeine Zeitung. "[The visit] won't bring anything worthwhile, but will only serve the most reactionary sectors of the Catholic Church...
...will also finally realize a 10-year-long personal dream that began with a random phone call from the Vatican. "I am the least likely person to get a call from the Vatican," says Garson, "but they wanted to do a project with me," involving printing some of Pope John Paul II's favorite poems and prayers...
...African immigrants were shot by white men with pellet guns. The town's immigrants responded by burning cars and vandalizing shops, prompting retaliatory attacks by residents. By the end of the weekend, at least 70 people - most of them migrant workers - had been injured. In the aftermath, the Pope called for tolerance and the government evacuated about 1,000 immigrants to neighboring cities to ensure their safety. The migrants also received uncharacteristically sympathetic media coverage. "This Time ... The Negroes Are Right," read the headline on Jan. 9 in the conservative newspaper Il Giornale. (See the top 10 news stories...