Word: vaticaners
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...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...
...question of whether such a work exists at all is a valid one. If it does, the church has remained mum. As insistent as it is on passing judgment, the Vatican remains troublingly resistant to singling out any genuinely serious modern art or literature to criticize. Hand-waving vaguely at “contemporary representations of beauty,” or straw-manning Ron and Harry, is far easier than starting a real debate about what role religion can play in the arts. So far, the church’s reaction to complex—if provocative—creative...
...Haven, sleepless night of party-hopping, and booze-fueled all-day tailgate at The Game, it’s safe to say that piety wasn’t at the forefront of the typical Harvard student’s mind this Saturday. Thousands of miles away in Vatican City, the Pope’s gesture may have superficially seemed like a gesture of aisle-crossing good will—but, in its own way, it was just as profane...