Word: vaticans
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Before he was stricken, Paul seemed to sense, somehow, that his life was nearing its end. Four weeks ago, as he left the Vatican for his annual summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo in the nearby Alban Hills, he told an aide: "We do not know if we will return and how we will return." On the first day of August, the theme recurred. Driven to the wine-making hamlet of Frattocchio to visit the grave of an old friend, he said to a knot of onlookers: "We hope to meet him after death, which for us cannot be far away...
...commissioned priests to conduct street-corner crusades. He built scores of new churches in the working-class suburbs that ring the city. Pope John XXIII named Montini a Cardinal in 1958, and Montini reportedly had a hand in John's keynote address at the opening of the Second Vatican Council, which encouraged the church "ever to look to the present, to new conditions and new forms of life...
Pope John had written in his diary that he wanted Montini to be his successor. When John died in 1963, the College of Cardinals agreed. They elected him on the fifth ballot. The day after his election, Paul announced on television that the Vatican Council would continue, and he guided it through three more sessions. His interventions were rare but usually decisive. During the fourth session, in 1965, when the critical document on religious liberty seemed threatened by a filibuster of Conservative Prelates, Paul forced a vote. The declaration passed overwhelmingly, 1,997 to 224, affirming to the world that...
Sometimes Paul raised expectations, or at least allowed them to grow, then disappointed those who hoped for change. In the spirit of Vatican II's declaration on collegiality (the sharing of authority), Paul established a synod of bishops that would meet regularly to advise him. Five times during his reign, churchmen from round the world convened in Rome to discuss such issues as clerical celibacy and evangelism. But the Pope controlled the agenda (he vetoed a discussion of the family in 1974, presumably because it would raise such questions as birth control and divorce), and he insisted on having...
Throughout his pontificate a procession of world leaders visited the Vatican, including some key figures from Communist countries: Yugoslavia's President Josip Broz Tito, Rumania's President Nicolai Ceauşescu, Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Of all the Pope's many diplomatic initiatives, including a long and fruitless attempt to mediate peace in VietNam and similarly frustrating efforts in Biafra, Northern Ireland and the Middle East, his Ostpolitik was the most successful. His overtures to the Communist world helped to win the church such concessions as limited freedom to teach, nominations...