Word: pontiffs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With the Iron Curtain long since vanished and Pope John Paul II resting in peace in the crypt below St. Peter's, why should we care whether the Soviet Union was the hand behind the 1981 attempted assassination of the Polish Pontiff? The news Thursday that an Italian parliamentary commission concluded "beyond any reasonable doubt" that the Soviets orchestrated the shooting may not forever settle this slice of intrigue. But 11 months to the day since John Paul's death, the unexpected update on this historical chapter serves as a reminder both of the papacy's unique power - and, especially...
...clear and simple call for Christian love and charity. Popes typically use their first encyclicals, the most authoritative form of Church writing, to set the tone for their reign rather than to spark debate or overhaul Catholic teachings. With this work, released Wednesday by top Vatican officials, the pontiff may have once and for all moved beyond the caricature painted by his opponents of a cold and rigid doctrinal enforcer from his quarter-century as John Paul II's chief of orthodoxy...
...pontiff-theologian then dissects the two categories of Christian love: "eros" (erotic love) and "agape" (spiritual love). Modern society, he argues, has debased eros, put sex up for sale, and defied the singularity of monogamous man-woman love. "Eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence," he writes. He concludes that eros and agape ultimately share a single destiny. "Love is indeed 'ecstasy,' not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus...
RELEASED. MEHMET ALI AGCA, 48, Turkish assailant who spent almost 20 years in prison in Italy for shooting and wounding Pope John Paul II in 1981, then served five more in a Turkish jail for the 1979 murder of a journalist; in Istanbul. The Pontiff, who was shot by Agca while riding in an open car through St. Peter's Square in Rome, forgave his would-be assassin and visited him in prison. But after the Turkish press railed at his release, Justice Minister Cemil Cicek ordered a review of whether Agca had been credited correctly for time served. Cicek...
...RELEASED. MEHMET ALI AGCA, 48, Turkish assailant who spent almost 20 years in jail in Italy for shooting and wounding Pope John Paul II in 1981, then served five more in a Turkish jail for the 1979 murder of a journalist; in Istanbul. The Pontiff, who was shot by Agca while riding in an open car through Rome's St. Peter's Square, forgave his would-be assassin and visited him in prison. But after the Turkish press railed at his release, Justice Minister Cernil Cicek ordered a review of whether Agca had been credited correctly for time served. Cicek...