Word: roman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Once pearls were considered far more valuable than diamonds, since only 1 in 10,000 oysters may contain a round natural pearl. In Roman times, pearls were so sought after and expensive that Julius Caesar barred women below a certain rank from wearing them. It wasn't until Kokichi Mikimoto, founder of Mikimoto pearls, successfully cultured pearls in the early 1900s that they could be easily matched and made into necklaces (before that, it could take up to 10 years to find enough matching pearls to make a strand). It was Coco Chanel who exploited the discovery of cultured pearls...
...Roman truism says that every new Pope changes the papacy, and the papacy changes every new Pope. In the case of Benedict XVI, a casual observer might wonder if the man who once was an iron-clad Cardinal has recently gone soft. Back in September, Benedict broke fresh ground for his ancient office by delivering an intellectually charged - and baldly controversial - lecture on faith, reason and violence. It was the young papacy's quintessential Ratzinger moment, as the 79-year-old professor-turned-pope returned to his old university in Regensburg to draw a theological line in the sand that...
...weekend that Benedict's pick to take over the Vatican office for the clergy, Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, had opened the door to a future discussion on celibacy in the priesthood. This came just weeks after the Pope held a meeting with Vatican cardinals that explicitly reaffirmed the Roman Church's longstanding ban on married clergy...
...statement saying that the current policy stands. Now Hummes, the Brazilian Cardinal about to take over the Congregation for the Clergy, has reopened it again. We can't know if Hummes - who on Monday clarified that the issue was not an immediate priority - was still a bit naive to Roman customs. But it is evidence of a more open intellectual climate under Benedict. And so with Ratzinger, who was perhaps the best-known modern Cardinal to become Pope, there is another bit of well-worn Roman wisdom to ponder: every papacy - like creation itself - is a work in progress...
...looking promising. SOFIA COPPOLA, 35, the first American woman nominated for an Academy Award for directing and the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, just had her first child with boyfriend THOMAS MARS of the French rock band Phoenix. The couple named their daughter Romy, after Sofia's brother Roman. Romy joins a Coppola clan that includes actors Nicolas Cage, Talia Shire and Jason Schwartzman. Expect some mighty slick birthday videos...