Word: vaticans
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With each of the Pope's excruciating appearances--from the shuffling steps and slurred sermons of last month's trip to Azerbaijan and Bulgaria to his abbreviated meeting at the Vatican last week with President George Bush--speculation has grown that John Paul II may be too enfeebled to continue leading the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics...
Shooing away rumors that he might soon step down from the lifetime charge, Vatican officials insist that the Pope is still sharp mentally. But even his staunchest defenders now concede that Parkinson's disease and an accumulation of other physical trials have left the Pontiff, 82, in an increasingly deteriorating condition. Adding long breaks and naps in what were once 17-hour workdays, the Pope has been forced to yield control of much of the Vatican's daily operations. But to whom...
...shouldn't discuss sex or money. But that's no longer possible in the Roman Catholic Church. Just last week Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland acknowledged paying $450,000 in 1998 to settle a claim that two decades ago he sexually assaulted a 30-year-old graduate student. (The Vatican accepted his resignation a day after the revelation.) Add the Weakland settlement to the huge sums other dioceses have paid to cover sex-abuse claims in recent years: an estimated $25 million in Santa Fe, N.M.; nearly $30 million in Boston; and $31 million in Dallas...
That's dramatically different from the liability of, say, McDonald's, in which the company can be sued if a customer anywhere is scalded by hot coffee. The church's legal structure acts as a foil to any attack on the center. And ultimately, headquarters is the Vatican--a sovereign state that is effectively immune from private legal action in the U.S. (The Vatican for its part is publicly against any payout of compensation in sexual-abuse cases.) Church officials claim that even when an archbishop is on record as being the chairman of a diocesan corporation, whether a parish...
Current headlines might give the impression that the Roman Catholic Church has a lot on its plate these days, but last week the Vatican's tirelessly vigilant Fides news service found time to publish an editorial chastising celebrities for wearing fancy crosses. The opinion piece, "A Matter of Coherence," observed, "There is a spreading fashion of wearing crosses decorated with diamonds and other precious stones." It cites JENNIFER ANISTON and NAOMI CAMPBELL, among others. "Is it consistent with the Gospel," the article asked, "to spend millions on a copy of the sacred symbol of the Christian faith and perhaps forget...