Word: vatican
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Some critics might swat Angels & Demons with tepid adjectives - "bustling" and "fumbling" spring to mind - but the only review that really matters came in last weekend. L'Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of Vatican City, described this sequel to The Da Vinci Code as "more than two hours of harmless entertainment, which hardly affects the genius and mystery of Christianity" and "a video game that first of all sparks curiosity and is also, maybe...
...years back, the Vatican, the seat of power for the Roman Catholic Church, had waxed apoplectic over The Da Vinci Code - both the Dan Brown book and Ron Howard's 2006 movie version. According to the director, the Holy See blocked his attempts to shoot scenes of Angels, another Brown novel, in the Roman churches where much of it is set. So Howard must have found L'Osservatore Romano's genial review an unexpected blessing, somewhere between a celebratory puff of white smoke and the mild penance of 10 Our Fathers and 10 Hail Marys. We also hear that...
Another encounter on Monday also failed to go according to Vatican plans. An evening ceremony in East Jerusalem to champion inter-religious dialogue was interrupted by an unscheduled diatribe by Palestinian Muslim cleric Sheikh Tasir al-Tamimi, who condemned Israel's attacks on Palestinians and its control over Jerusalem's holy sites. The diminutive and elderly Pope appeared a bit shaken by the outburst, and the event was cut short as the Vatican delegation quickly left the meeting hall. Papal spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, who has been working overtime to react to events, called the Muslim cleric's actions...
...affairs, was given shelter from the Nazis in an Italian Catholic Boys School during the war. But Minerbi, who has met Benedict several times when he was still a cardinal, says the Pope wants to "Christianize the Holocaust." Minerbi concludes: "There's a long way to go before the Vatican and the Jews establish friendly relations." (See pictures of Hitler's rise to power...
...Vatican observers make a point to not constantly compare Benedict to his predecessor: two different men facing two different challenges. Still, their biographies are linked in a way that gave the German Pope a unique chance to complete the legacy of his Polish predecessor in helping to reconcile the 20th century Christian Europe that failed to save its Jews from near annihilation. Instead, eloquent and heartfelt as he may have been, Benedict came to Israel's Holocaust memorial and spoke neither as a man of his times nor his place. With reporting by Aaron J. Klein/Jerusalem