Word: vaticans
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...Vicar of Rome, charged with standing in for the Pope in many of his duties as official Bishop of Rome. In that role, Ruini forged close relationships with Pope John Paul II and with his successor, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, another top official in the Roman Curia. Vatican insiders say Ruini's support for Ratzinger in the conclave was crucial to his election. The Pope has since praised Ruini repeatedly for his aggressive - and effective - defense of Roman Catholic values in Italy's public sphere. A lanky figure with a tendency to slouch, Ruini can seem dour at times...
...That's possible because the relationship between Church and state has been in flux for well over a decade. In postwar Italy, the Christian Democrats held or shared power in every government until 1992. But despite its leaders' intimate ties to the Vatican hierarchy, the party continued to stress the secular nature of politics. Its collapse after a bribery scandal in the early 1990s created a diaspora of former Christian Democrats into rival parties, and fierce competition among erstwhile colleagues. Each sought to demonstrate greater fidelity to the Church and better connections to the Holy See. "There was a whole...
...Pope's agenda, there had been a steady flow of leaks to Italian news outlets capped off last week when a progressive Catholic newswire posted the entire paper on its website. The controversial and carefully worded document is just the sort of news story the Vatican prefers to land in one fell swoop, launching desired changes internally while minimizing the duration of the public reverberations. Instead, the new "instruction" from the Congregation for Catholic Education has remained in the news for weeks, with flip-flopping interpretations that managed neither to limit criticism nor to clearly articulate the pontiff's purpose...
...gays-in-the-priesthood saga was not the first troublesome episode of poorly managed information flows from the Curia since Benedict took over. Most notably, a leaked version of the Vatican's reaction to the July 7 terror attacks in London erroneously included the Pope using the highly charged phrase "anti-Christian" to describe the bombing. Several sources have traced the incorrect draft to Secretary of State Angelo Sodano's office. Navarro-Valls, who reportedly is at odds with Sodano, is still running the press office, but is less and less visible. Meanwhile, Benedict himself doesn't seem particularly preoccupied...
...Seven months into Benedict XVI's papacy, however, some Vatican watchers have noticed that the Vatican PR machine is not exactly purring along. Tuesday's official release of the Vatican's long-awaited document reinforcing a ban on gays from the priesthood concludes a messy chapter on how not to do damage control...