Word: vaticans
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...long-planned, historic six-day visit to Britain-the first by a Pontiff since the 1534 schism under King Henry VIII-obviously requires some difficult calculations. But informed Vatican sources were relatively confident that the Pontiff would proceed on schedule, unless the fighting in the South Atlantic escalates dramatically. As one Vatican official puts it, "If there were an absolute state of [all-out] war, that would be different. He would have to dissociate himself from that. But he has constantly stressed that his visit is a pastoral visit," which by Vatican thinking means that the Pope could tour England...
...August 1982 for the sixth centennial of the icon of the Black Madonna, the center of the nation's major shrine. Last week, on the very day that martial-law authorities were breaking up demonstrations in a dozen or more Polish cities, the Pope told pilgrims in the Vatican gardens: "I am morally obliged to be together with my countrymen for this great anniversary...I hold this to be a duty of mine, a duty of the heart, the duty of a son toward his mother and nation." But, the Pontiff added, "there must be created adequate conditions...
...scrupulously objective in collecting data. The resulting estimates: 137 million Soviets are irreligious, but an impressive 97 million remain Christian. There, as elsewhere, Barrett found masses of members known only to the churches. Worldwide there appear to be 70 million so-called crypto-Christians. Even the Vatican's count may be conservative. In Rome, though official church documents were impressive in their detail, one questionnaire on the number of baptisms in an African country was answered by the harried local bishop with the scrawl: "Deus scit" (God only knows...
Bishops respond to such charges by saying that they have no choice. Vatican II's documents, says Archbishop Roach, "require that the church not only teach the moral truths about the person. It must also join the public debate where policies are shaped, programs developed and decisions taken which directly touch the rights of the person." Monsignor George Higgins, a veteran social-action specialist, contends that speaking against the Bomb in particular is simply "what the Pope wants them...
...Pope? One clue may be in the fact that after conferring with Archbishop Roach, Pope John Paul protested outside military intervention in El Salvador. But John Paul pointedly castigated terrorism by both the right and the left. (The U.S. bishops have not emphasized their criticisms of the left.) One Vatican prelate contends that the Pope is mildly irritated with the U.S. bishops' stance on Central America but not enough to do anything about it. On the questions of nuclear arms, human rights, abortion and poverty, the Pope's stated positions and personal actions suggest that he almost certainly...