Word: romane
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Eight years ago, a handful of Roman Catholic families in Huntersville, a suburb of Charlotte, N.C., started a new parish. The home of their church, St. Mark, was a bowling alley. Our Lady of the Lanes, as they jokingly called it, was an apt symbol of the scarcity--and supple ingenuity--of Catholics in a region known as the buckle of the Protestant Bible Belt. Soon St. Mark was gaining a family a day. Now its almost 2,800 families hear Mass in a cavernous gymnasium as they await completion of a new church. Among the newcomers is Ben Liuzzo...
...church in the South could be influential beyond the Mason-Dixon Line. Southern Catholicism "is changing the nature of the church in America," says Patrick McHenry, 29, a Republican who last month became Charlotte's first Catholic Congressman. "We adhere to a truer and purer view of Catholicism." Roman Catholics, still the largest religious denomination in the U.S., at 65 million strong, will debate what "truer and purer" means. But one thing seems certain: Southern Catholics, influenced in no small degree by their morally hard-line Protestant neighbors, as well as the strong piety of Latin America, are decidedly more...
Despite his physical frailties brought on by Parkinson's disease, his collaborators say John Paul, 84, is mentally alert and capable of making big calls on the direction of the Roman Catholic Church. But even the most steadfast Vatican loyalists concede that a substantial chunk of his workload has been delegated to top subordinates in Rome. A senior Vatican official told TIME, "Things that the Pope would have handled personally in the past are more and more being entrusted to aides." Some duties, such as signing major encyclicals and apostolic letters, cannot be handed off to others. But Vatican insiders...
...vehemently opposes. While the Pope recuperates, many of his duties fall to some of his most trusted advisers. Secretary of State Angelo Cardinal Sodano, 77, is the man with the most administrative muscle. A veteran diplomat, Sodano is like a papal Prime Minister, responsible for the governance of the Roman Curia, headquarters of the Vatican bureaucracy. Sodano is also charged with covering for the Pope during temporary absences, such as the last week's hospitalization, and was slated to stand in for John Paul at this week's meeting in Rome with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Virtually every...
...cover for something much worse. Sources at the Vatican discount that scenario, noting both the Pope's relatively robust appearance Sunday and the fact that the basic details about his condition were being released at regular intervals. Navarro-Valls and others who manage the flow of information in the Roman Curia would have nothing to gain from telling the world's one billion Catholics not to worry if they knew that tomorrow would bring bad news. Still, one well-placed Vatican official told TIME that the situation Tuesday night was most likely more grave than the official word that...