Word: roman
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Tarcisio Bertone doesn't have the guarded air of those who tend to rise to the heights of Vatican power. He smiles easily. He laughs out loud. His oval face and dark, bespectacled eyes show no sign of scars from the bureaucratic battles that accompany most climbs up the Roman Curia career ladder. A few years ago, I saw Bertone walking alone on a side street near St. Peter's and went over to say hello and shake his hand. He stopped on a dime when he heard his name, turning toward me with his arms spread open, and practically...
Although he shares the same title as the chief U.S. diplomat, the Vatican Secretary of State is more like a Prime Minister, responsible not only for foreign policy but also for overseeing church headquarters at the Roman Curia, being the Vatican link to Catholic organizations and officials around the world, and even stepping in for the Pope if he falls ill or is unavailable. While Pope John Paul II's constant travels kept him somewhat separated from the workings of the Vatican bureaucracy, Benedict and Bertone are instead expected to work hand in hand on all matters, foreign and domestic...
DIED. Robert Drinan, 86, liberal Democrat from Massachusetts and the first Roman Catholic priest to become a voting member of Congress; in Washington. A staunch opponent of the Vietnam War, he was elected in 1970 (with the help of campaign aide John Kerry and the slogan "Father Knows Best"). He charmed, and sometimes cowed, colleagues with his clerical clothing--he said he had no other suits--and was the first to call for Richard Nixon's impeachment, over the U.S.'s secret bombing of Cambodia. He left politics in 1980, after Pope John Paul II ordered him to resign, citing...
Downtown Mogadishu is a tropical Stalingrad, a bullet-raked, mortar-pounded, artillery-shelled canvas of Roman arches and Italian colonnades that that testifies to man's capacity for creation and also for destruction. Not the sort of place, in other words, that you'd expect to find a $30 million telecommunications concern doing a roaring trade in an ultra-competitive market. Yet, as Mustafa Sheikh, deputy managing director of Telcom Somalia says, the absence of a functioning government for 16 years has been a boon for private enterprise. His firm is one of three in Somalia that provides fixed-line...
DIED. Reuben Nakian, 89, prolific American sculptor whose quasiabstract marbles, clay urns, terra-cotta plaques and monumental bronzes were inspired by Greek and Roman mythology; in Stamford, Conn. Nakian's realistic work brought him early fame, particularly his life-size sculptures of Franklin Roosevelt and some of his Cabinet and an eight-foot plaster figure of Babe Ruth...