Word: st
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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After the dramatic Christmas Eve mass knockdown of Pope Benedict XVI, authorities are reporting that the 25-year-old woman who jumped a St. Peter's Basilica security barrier meant the pontiff no harm. That Benedict was indeed unscathed, and delivered the traditional "Urbi et Orbi" message "to the city and the world" from the loggia overlooking Saint Peter's Square, was the good news for Christmas Day. But even if Susanna Maiolo, a Swiss-Italian national with a history of psychological problems, only wanted to share her holiday wishes with the Pope, tough questions remain for those responsible...
...heads the Vatican gendarmes, a private police force responsible for protecting the Pope. Giani, who is always within arm's length of the Pope, also helped wrestle away a mentally disturbed German man in 2007 who'd jumped on the Pope's open jeep he uses to circle St. Peter's Square before and after his weekly Wednesday General Audience...
...best clue to Boxing Day's origins can be found in the song "Good King Wenceslas." According to the Christmas carol, Wenceslas, who was Duke of Bohemia in the early 10th century, was surveying his land on St. Stephen's Day - Dec. 26 - when he saw a poor man gathering wood in the middle of a snowstorm. Moved, the King gathered up surplus food and wine and carried them through the blizzard to the peasant's door. The alms-giving tradition has always been closely associated with the Christmas season - hence the canned-food drives and Salvation Army Santas that...
...Irish still refer to the holiday as St. Stephen's Day, and they have their own tradition called hunting the wren, in which boys fasten a fake wren to a pole and parade it through town. Also known as Wren Day, the tradition supposedly dates to 1601, to the Battle of Kinsale, in which the Irish tried to sneak up on the English invaders but were betrayed by the song of an overly vocal wren - although this legend's veracity is also highly debated. Years ago, a live wren was hunted and killed for the parade, but modern sentiments deemed...
...Obamas have attended Sunday services in Washington three times this year - once at the predominantly African-American 19th Street Baptist Church, and twice at St. John's Episcopal Church across Lafayette Square from the White House. Asked at Tuesday's White House briefing whether the First Family is still searching for a local church to join, press secretary Robert Gibbs responded: "The President has attended fairly regularly up at Camp David a church that he's comfortable in and has enjoyed attending." (See pictures of Obama meeting Pope Benedict...