Word: vatican
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...church, and the first in a millennium to attend the Eucharist in Istanbul alongside Orthodoxy's Ecumenical Patriarch. But despite these gestures of friendship, substantive progress toward Christian unity has nearly come to a halt during John Paul II's reign. Last week a front-page editorial in the Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano, seemed to signal that there is no prospect of structural reunion of the churches so long as this Pope's views prevail...
...decision to clean the Sistine frescoes, made four years ago by the curatorial officers of the Vatican museums, headed by their director general, Carlo Pietrangeli, and their secretary-treasurer, Walter Persegati, is one of the most courageous ever made in the field of art conservation. The work has three stages and will take until 1992. The years 1980 to 1984 saw the cleaning of the lunettes, depicting the ancestors of Christ--until now the least visible part of Michelangelo's immense scheme. The years 1985 to 1988 will be spent on the ceiling and spandrels--the figures of the giant...
Among his most pressing tasks when he returns home: preparing for a two-week meeting, starting next November, of Roman Catholic bishops. The extraordinary synod will convene to examine the work of the Second Vatican Council, which made sweeping changes in church life. The mandate of the synod, says a Vatican theologian, will be "assessment and clarification" of the 1962-65 council, "not a correction or revision." No doubt, but the clarification is likely to be exactly in line with the Pope's summons to authority, discipline and orthodoxy...
...Says Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications in Rome: "The ordination of women (is) not a concept emerging from sociological considerations. Jesus clearly did not ordain women to the priesthood, nor did he authorize the church to do so." As for further discussion, another Vatican official says categorically, "The verdict is in. It is simply not worth discussing for the duration of this pontificate...
...General Zenon Platek, 58, the suspended official of the Interior Ministry assigned to monitor church activities, made the surprising claim that the ministry was aware of a plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II during his 1983 visit to Poland and that several people with explosives were arrested. A Vatican spokesman said last week that he was not aware of such a plot, as did Warsaw's official spokesman, Jerzy Urban. Platek also claimed that just before Popieluszko's murder, the priest was to be dispatched to Rome. Vatican officials denied the statement...