Word: vatican
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...caused partly by the very disasters that struck the world during Pacelli's lifetime, for they branded into men of all faiths a new need for direction and values beyond materialist optimism. Partly it was caused by the death of the old European order, which forced the Vatican to deal not with monarchs or heads of state but with the people, and to find new ways of reaching them. Above all, it was caused by Pius XII's insistence that the papacy had a mission to assert Christian truths about all phases of human life. The Pope delivered...
...that nuns' garb be modernized, liberalized many church rules. But he was an innovator also in far more significant works, which he performed in defense of Christianity against ideological dangers. In a long career (one of his first assignments as a young diplomat was to help represent the Vatican at Queen Victoria's funeral) he saw these dangers of the soul veer from Edwardian complacency to existentialist despair. Perhaps his most important efforts were in these areas: ¶ COMMUNISM. When Pius XII was born, the Communists had nowhere won political power; at the time of his death...
...Cunctator. Pius XII was the only Pope to have visited America (in 1936 when he was Vatican Secretary of State), and his pontificate was notable for its strengthened ties with the U.S. Five U.S. cardinals were named during his reign (James Cardinal Mclntyre, Edward Cardinal Mooney, Francis Cardinal Spellman, the late Samuel Cardinal Stritch, the late John Cardinal Glennon). Two close personal friends of Pius XII were Americans-Cardinal Spellman and Boston Tycoon Joseph P. Kennedy, onetime Ambassador to the Court of St. James...
...preoccupation with the world at large and with his diplomat's tendency to avoid sharp edges, Pope Pius often neglected the Vatican itself. He seemed to shrink from making much-needed appointments to the central machinery of the church. Result, at the time of his death: 15 vacancies in a superannuated College of Cardinals, no Secretary of State, no governor for Vatican City, no camerlengo (see The Succession). Said one of his closest advisers sadly last week: "He provided badly for his successor...
...members of the Noble Guard, with golden helmets and drawn swords, took up a vigil at the bedside. Later they guarded the body during its 15-mile-long trip to the Vatican, through the Roman streets that the first native Roman Pope in 200 years had loved well, passing a stone's throw from the house where he was born...