Word: vatican
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...structure as a variety program, an episodic fashion show. Each of the women in Guido's life comes on, talks about her life, performs a song, then fades into the crowd. Some of these solo spots are pretty wow-y: Cruz's writhing sensuality in "A Call from the Vatican," the surprising sass and vocal authority that Judi Dench brings to "Folies Bergere" and a nicely gaudy turn by the pop star Fergie as a zaftig whore who urges the perpetually pre-adolescent Guido to "Be Italian." A few numbers are duds, like Hudson's attempt (in a new number...
...Catholic Church's process of declaring saints is a complex and fascinating one. On Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI announced that several candidates for sainthood had reached the initial "venerable" status, having been shown by a Vatican committee to have lived heroically virtuous lives. If a scientifically inexplicable miracle is subsequently attributed to their post-mortem intercession, the second step of "beatification" takes place, followed by eventual canonization if a second miracle is proven. Two popes were among the new "venerables." The first was Benedict's still-mega-popular predecessor, John Paul II. The other, however, has doubts swirling around...
...avoided public denunciations of Hitler's Final Solution because it would have prompted a Nazi backlash. After the German-born Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger rose to the chair of St. Peter, he initially decided to shelve Pius' candidacy for sainthood for further study and an examination of documents in the Vatican archive. With debate still heated about the historical facts - and with Benedict, a German of that era, in the papacy - many observers believed it might just be better for his successors to make the call on Pius' virtues. So what changed? (Should Piux XII be a saint...
...must be mined for personal motivations. Joseph Ratzinger was a devout 12-year-old in the heavily Catholic region of Bavaria when Eugenio Pacelli became Pope in 1939. Through his early years as priest and theologian, Ratzinger remained devoted to Pius until the pontiff's death in 1958. A Vatican insider once described Benedict's memory to this particular predecessor this way: "Pius is really his Pope." (See how Pius XII was perceived during his lifetime, from TIME's archives...
Jewish groups, who still remember John Paul II's historic efforts to open dialogue across religious boundaries, were furious at the Vatican announcement. Benedict's planned visit next month to Rome's central synagogue is officially still on, but Italy's Jewish leaders are upset by the news. It follows a string of perceived slights and slip-ups by Benedict, including his bringing back into the fold followers of the movement founded by arch-traditionalist French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. A speech the Pope gave in May at Jerusalem's Holocaust memorial also left many Jews disappointed at its vagueness about...