Word: st
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Suddenly, more than an hour after the puzzling signals began to billow forth, the Vatican's Pericle Felici, ranking Cardinal-deacon in the Sacred College, appeared at the opened Window of the Benediction in the center of St. Peter's Basilica. His Latin words boomed out over loudspeakers: "Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam!" (I announce to you a great joy. We have a Pope!) The crowd was hushed as Felici went on: "He is the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord Cardinal Albino Luciani, who has taken the name of John Paul the First [in Latin, Joannes Paulus Primus...
After the blessing, with the bells of St. Peter's ringing loudly, the new Pope met the rising applause with a wave and a wide, yet almost shy smile. He withdrew, but three minutes later, at the insistence of the continuing applause, the new Pope appeared again. The 110 Cardinals, crowded together on the lateral loggias flanking the central balcony on the basilica façade, smiled happily. John Paul lifted his hands slowly in the papal gesture and smiled once again, this time more radiantly, less shyly...
...interim between Paul's death (Aug. 6) and the beginning of the conclave (Aug. 25). The Cardinals had plenty of time to get together in small groups and large, conferring, trading intelligence, lobbying ever so discreetly. By last Friday, when they assembled at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter's Basilica, beneath Bernini's stained-glass window portraying the Holy Spirit as a white dove in a solid circle of gold, they had carefully weighed all the papabili (possible Popes). During a Mass celebrated in Latin, the Cardinals invoked divine guidance for the task ahead of them...
Luciani, who lived in the patriarchal palace next to St. Mark's Basilica, loved to exercise by walking or riding a bicycle through the city's streets! Jesuit Theologian Herbert Ryan of Los Angeles' Loyola Marymount University recalls how, carrying a cake in a pink box for the participants, Luciani once walked 25 minutes from his residence to the meeting of an ecumenical commission...
...favorite saint, Ryan says, is Venice's Pope St. Pius X, whom Luciani has often cited in his sermons. (Pius X is often remembered as the Pope who condemned Modernism, but that act was largely the work of his eminence grise Cardinal Merry del Val; Luciani, though, has revered Pius as the man who encouraged frequent reception of Communion and attendance at Mass.) The Venetian connection...