Word: vatican
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There was a poignant footnote to President Obama's historic July 10 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. Behind closed doors in the papal library, Obama handed Benedict a letter that Senator Edward Kennedy had asked him to personally deliver to the Pontiff. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs later told reporters that nobody - not even the President - knew the contents of the sealed missive. Obama asked Benedict to pray for Kennedy and called the ailing Senator afterward to fill him in on his encounter with the 82-year-old Pope...
...less a personal discussion of his faith than a chance to prove that he wasn't afraid to show up in the lions' den. In a speech that went after critics in the Religious Right, Kennedy quoted Pope John XXIII's words at the start of the Second Vatican Council: "We must beware of those who burn with zeal but are not endowed with much sense...
...Rome Abortion Drug Okayed The Italian Pharmaceuticals Agency has voted to approve the use of the abortion-inducing drug Mifepristone, also known as RU-486, prompting condemnation in the predominantly Roman Catholic country and a threat of excommunication by the Vatican for prescribing doctors and their patients. In its ruling, the agency noted that the "well-being of citizens" supersedes "personal convictions" about the pill, which is already available in the U.K., the U.S. and China. Senior church bioethicist Monsignor Elio Sgreccia blasted the drug as a "poison...
Former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi is the public face of the opposition, but there are many others who are just as important, from former Presidents Mohammed Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to many grand ayatullahs in Qom, Iran's Vatican. Mousavi was chosen as spokesman for the opposition because of his impeccable revolutionary credentials. Even at the revolution's most militant violent and radical peak, Mousavi stood by Khomeini, never questioning his decisions. It was an office under Mousavi that coordinated a series of attacks against the U.S. in Lebanon, including an attack on the U.S. embassy...
While the doctrinal stance breaks no new ground, the question now, like in March, is a matter of emphasis. Why, months after the difficult issue had largely faded from view, did the Pope feel compelled to return to a case that could leave the church looking coldhearted? A senior Vatican official says the Pope was forced to back up the Brazilian bishop. "[Sobrinho] was furious," says the official. "There was the impression that the local bishop had been subjected to immediate scrutiny by the Holy...