Word: vatican
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...reality of the saga of the Knights Templar is almost as amazing as the myths that embellish it. On Thursday the Vatican plans to add another colorful chapter when it publishes a long-misplaced, 699-year-old papal report on the medieval holy warriors. Vatican publisher Scrinium will offer 799 copies (the 800th will go to the Pope), at $8,375 apiece, of a 1308 parchment titled Processus Contra Templarios (Trial Against the Templars), which chronicles the order's sordid endgame: the accusations of heresy, the Templars' defense, and Pope Clement V's absolution of the order, before...
...Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, viewed by Jews and many Christians as the site of the Temple of Solomon - hence the new group's name. Initially modest (its coat of arms was two knights on one horse because that was all they could afford), its fortunes skyrocketed when the Vatican extended it extraordinary privileges, exempting it from local laws, taxes and any authority but the Pope's. Suddenly it was bestowed with spectacular gifts of money and land and inundated by volunteers from some of Europe's most noble families. Well-equipped and trained Templar knights became...
...priests and prelates of all stripe has long been considered the catalyst that turned inter-religious dialogue into something of a worldwide, faith-based movement in its own right. But not all were impressed. Before becoming the current Pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was considered one of the Vatican officials most skeptical about the efforts spawned by Assisi, which risked clashing with the traditionalist theologian's conviction that differences among religions should not be glossed over for the sake of feel-good encounters...
...world, punctuated by acts of violence, including the burning of churches and the killing of a nun in Somalia. Benedict was quick to turn to the "spirit of Assisi" in trying to calm the waters after his Regensberg speech, inviting Rome-based Muslim diplomats for a meeting in the Vatican and visiting the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, where he prayed shoulder-to-shoulder with the Turkish imam. Though tensions remain, a letter earlier this month addressed to the Pope and other Christian leaders, signed by 138 prominent Muslim clerics and scholars, is seen as a potential breakthrough in relations between...
...John Paul's good relations with Jews. But in recent months both those dialogues have suffered some nasty hiccups. First, in July, the Pope allowed for expanded use of the old-rite Latin Mass, which contains a Good Friday prayer that offends some Jews. A few days later, the Vatican's doctrinal office reiterated Benedict's stance - first stated when he was cardinal - that non-Catholic denominations of Christianity, excepting the Orthodox, are not true Churches because they cannot trace their hierachies back to the apostles. (The Orthodox, however, are a reduced Church because they do not recognize the primacy...