Word: vi
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...visiting his papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo, 15 miles south of Rome. The village crowds, accustomed to a more distant papal style, roared with approval as he stood up to wave from the back of his open black Mercedes. On the balcony of the bedroom in which Pope Paul VI died last August, John Paul told the crowd with a smile: "Our first meeting has been very warm, very noisy, and I hope very religious...
...last non-Italian Pope was a Dutchman, Adrian VI (1522-23). A university chancellor and rector in the Low Countries, he also was Inquisitor General of Spain. For a man charged with burning heretics, he had a delicate sensibility. Shocked by the immorality of Renaissance art, he threatened to whitewash the Sistine Chapel...
...Adrian VI was the first Pope to face the consequences of Martin Luther's reform movement. But his confession of ecclesiastical errors and call for reform at Nuremberg in 1522 antagonized the German bishops almost more than Luther did-and anyhow came too late. When the Pope died virtually unmourned after a pontificate of 20 months, someone hung laurels on the door of the papal physician who had failed to save his life. For 455 years after that, Adrian's disastrous tenure cast a "Dutch curse" over the possibility of another non-Italian Pope...
Wojtyla's election poses embarrassing difficulties for the party. The government discouraged a visit from Pope Paul VI for the church's millennial celebration in 1966, but it can hardly discourage a trip home by a native son. Next spring Poland celebrates the 900th anniversary of the martyrdom of a national spiritual hero, St. Stanislaw of Cracow. Polish bishops last week formally asked the new Pope to attend. If the regime tries to keep him away, the volatile Poles could take to the streets in protest. If the new Pope visits, they will surely take to the streets...
Western observers were puzzled about what Wojtyla's election might mean elsewhere in the Communist world, especially in regard to the Vatican's strategy of Ostpolitik. Diplomatic dealings with Communist regimes to ease persecution of Catholics were pressed assiduously by Pope Paul VI. The imponderable factor is not so much Wojtyla, who knows when to roar and when to purr, but rather the Communist governments and the Christians who have to live with them, especially in the other nations in Eastern Europe...