Word: vatican
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Williams' mood is unlikely to be as upbeat when he meets with Pope Benedict on Saturday, just a month after the Vatican's surprise announcement outlining historic new procedures designed to help disaffected conservative Anglicans enter the Roman Catholic fold. Both Anglicans and Catholics are now awaiting the first details of exactly how the Vatican will bring in would-be Anglican converts, groups or parishes. "This announcement from Rome is incredibly messy," says Rev. Jo Bailey Wells, who heads the Anglican Studies department at Duke University Divinity School. "It's confused and confusing." (See pictures of President Obama meeting Pope...
...secret negotiations between the Vatican's top doctrinal officials and traditionalist Anglicans took place behind the back of Williams, who is the spiritual leader of Anglicanism (though without the universal authority that the Pope holds in Catholicism) and a longtime proponent of gently moving the two faiths closer together through patient ecumenical dialogue. "They've pulled a fast one over on him," Wells says of Williams. "It makes a laughing stock of those pushing for greater dialogue, who have made great strides in the past 30 years." (See pictures of the path of Pope Benedict...
...Vatican sources say Williams' Saturday morning papal audience, which was scheduled long before the latest move from Rome, is now expected to be kept brief and mostly hidden from the media. Wells is sure the Archbishop of Canterbury will address the tensions created by the Pope's new policy, "but he will be very gracious, as he always...
...answer, at least in the short term, will depend on the Vatican's new policy. Any major move will require the resolution of key practical issues such as who owns church property, who can ordain priests, and other risks of dividing parishes over the desire by some into full communion with the Catholic Church. One conservative Anglican leader preparing to make the leap with his followers is hopeful that the Pope's decision to set up separate Anglican "personal ordinariates" - structurally similar to Catholic dioceses, but with married clergy and more democratic church governance - could attract growing numbers of traditionalists...
...interview with L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Holy See's office for dialogue with other Christians, said that "to think that the Pope made this decision just to 'expand his empire' is ridiculous. A group of Anglicans freely and legitimately asked to enter the Catholic Church. It was not our initiative." (Read: "The Pope to Unhappy Anglicans: Come...