Word: rome
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Thus wrote Pope Pius XII in his last will and testament, found after his death last week in a safe in his study. But the remains of Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, were not "laid simply" away. Before the great altar in St. Peter's, where only the Pope may say Mass, the body of Pius XII lay in state for three days. Then, after final absolution, it was placed in a triple coffin (oak, lead and cypress) and interred in the most sacred spot in Christendom-below the Bernini altar near...
When Pacelli was born in 1876, in Rome, the papacy seemed doomed to a decline. Six years before, it had been stripped of temporal power beyond the tiny (108.7 acres) Vatican enclave. Only 22 years before that, Pope Pius IX had fled when Mazzini and his revolutionists seized control of Rome. In Pacelli's childhood the world outside the Vatican seethed with anticlericalism and glowed with humanist confidence in the ever onwardness and upwardness of history. Today the papacy and the Catholic Church are immensely stronger. Part of the story is told in numbers: during Pius...
...ancient, ponderous rituals began. Swiss Guards drew a heavy iron chain across the Gandolfo Palace entrance, and in Rome the great bronze doors of St. Peter's clanged shut. Attendants removed the flannel pajamas in which the Pope died and dressed the body in a white silk cassock and an ermine-trimmed crimson velvet cape. Sister Pasqualina, the German nun who had been the Pope's devoted housekeeper, had a small ritual of her own. She assembled the Pope's half-dozen pet birds and, carrying their cage and two suitcases, left for an unannounced destination...
Since Pius XII had not filled the office that would become most important after his death, that of Camerlengo (chamberlain), the 13 cardinals in Rome on the day he died hurriedly chose one: 79-year-old Vatican Diplomat Benedetto Aloisi Cardinal Masella. One of his first duties was the breaking of the Fisherman's ring worn by the late Pope as well as the larger papal seals used for documents. (Traditional purpose: to ensure against forging of papal documents...
...later did the same for James Joyce's Ulysses.) Hard on the heels of Married Love, red-haired Author Stopes turned out Wise Parenthood. The idea of using artificial contraceptives to space pregnancies was then as repugnant to the Church of England as to the Church of Rome: in both, clerics denounced the woman and her works...