Word: romane
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...used to be said that in polite society one shouldn't discuss sex or money. But that's no longer possible in the Roman Catholic Church. Just last week Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland acknowledged paying $450,000 in 1998 to settle a claim that two decades ago he sexually assaulted a 30-year-old graduate student. (The Vatican accepted his resignation a day after the revelation.) Add the Weakland settlement to the huge sums other dioceses have paid to cover sex-abuse claims in recent years: an estimated $25 million in Santa Fe, N.M.; nearly $30 million in Boston...
...revenues totaling around $7.5 billion annually. Even more impressive are its vast property holdings, which include everything from cathedrals and schools to beachfront retreats, stately mansions, golf courses and television and radio stations. But the real secret of the church's financial strength is that each of the 178 Roman Catholic dioceses in the U.S. organizes its affairs separately; nearly all employ a highly complex and decentralized legal structure that so far has effectively shielded their assets from legal claims brought against priests...
There is much to protect. According to lawyers for 38 plaintiffs in Rhode Island, the Roman Catholic diocese of Providence operates more than 220 corporate subsidiaries, including the Aldrich Mansion, a sprawling compound on Narragansett Bay where the Brad Pitt movie Meet Joe Black was filmed. Shooting took six weeks on a property that charges $3,000 to hold a baby shower there. The Providence diocese owns $44 million in real estate, and income from its property finances a wide range of social services. Diocese officials argue that it cannot afford to compensate victims of sex abuse...
...role in Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardennes' The Son, a touching drama about a troubled teenager and the carpenter whose son he killed. But after all the politico-ethnic tsimmes and tsouris, the Jury (headed by U.S. director David Lynch) gave its top award, the Palme d'Or, to Roman Polanski's Holocaust saga The Pianist, an epic adaptation of the 1946 memoir by Jewish musician and Warsaw Ghetto survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman. Cannes this year was good for the Jews, and not bad for world cinema. It is always dangerous to find political significance in movies. Films are not news...
...research findings. The most striking are those showing that, where the brain is concerned, the familiar exhortation is right: use it or lose it. The Religious Orders Study, headed by Dr. David Bennett, director of the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center in Chicago, looked at 700 elderly, dementia-free Roman Catholic nuns, priests and brothers. Each was asked about time spent on various activities, among them viewing television; listening to the radio; reading newspapers, magazines and books; playing games such as cards and checkers; doing crossword puzzles; and going to museums...