Word: shrine
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...there was Lenin, stiff and still, a symbol and a sign, And rancid races come to thrill and wonder at his Shrine; And hold the thought: if Lenin rot the Soviets will decay. Perhaps this explains why Khrushchev & Con go to the expense that they do to keep the old goat on display...
Laotians rarely worry, but they are always concerned with the state of Vientiane's Thai Dam pagoda. They believe that the black Buddhist shrine is in reality a cork that holds back an evil demon. Last week, when flares arched over the Thai Dam and the rattle of rifle fire broke Vientiane's predawn quiet, many Laotians feared that the cork had come unstuck...
...Italy, as in other Mediterranean countries, the sacred and the profane exist side by side. There is nothing like a good shrine, for example, to attract a raggle-taggle of sausage vendors, post card hawkers, fortune tellers, pickpockets, shooting-gallery barkers and common gyp artists - all waiting to peel the pilgrims of their lire. And if the shrine honors a particularly popular saint, the traffic in counterfeit relics is brisk...
Such was the situation in the moun tain town of San Giovanni Rotondo, not far from Foggia in southeastern Italy. Here was a shrine to a saint who was not only popular but who provided the extra added attraction of being alive as well. Padre Pio was not officially a saint; to qualify for sainthood, one must be dead and have been responsible for at least four unchallenged miracles. But one day in 1918, the Capuchin friar looked at his hands and what he saw terrified him so that he fainted; the frightened monks who came to help crossed themselves...
...mismanagement and waste began to filter into the Vatican. In 1960, Girolamo Bortignon, Capuchin Bishop of Padua, began to complain to powerful friends in the Holy See that the activities in San Giovanni Rotondo would bear an investigation. Pope John sent an emissary, Msgr. Carlo Maccari, to the busy shrine with directions to set things in order. Maccari saw plenty that needed to be set in order. He saw the dread Spiritual Daughters squabbling over a cushion on which the padre had knelt, finally tearing it to bits. He saw other women following the padre about, armed with scissors...