Word: priestly
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Every Jan. 6, Greeks celebrate Epiphany with a ceremony full of symbolism and hope. All over the country, priests throw a gold cross into open water and young men dive in to retrieve it. The winners get a blessing on the spot; everyone else takes home some holy water for a trouble-free new year. Newly elected Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou attended ceremonies on the Aegean island of Lesbos this year, but with Greece sinking under debt and a huge budget deficit as fast as a priest's crucifix, Papandreou is going to need more than holy water...
GRANT DESME, a former top prospect for the Oakland Athletics, announcing Jan. 22 that he will quit baseball to become a priest...
...book by the priest in charge of the Vatican's official case for Pope John Paul II's sainthood is packed with fascinating - and, apparently, meticulously verified - revelations. The one that grabbed most of the headlines was the claim that John Paul whipped himself with a belt, an act of corporal penitence designed to draw the flagellator closer to Christ's suffering, and one that is usually associated with a very distant century, or a Dan Brown novel...
...Pope decided he was no longer capable of leading the church, he would convoke a Consistory of all the world's Cardinals at the Vatican. After they accept his resignation, the Cardinals would elect a successor, and the ex-Pope would "return to the status of simple priest in some hospital or monastery...
...sign the decree. And though his papacy can sometimes seem by-the-book, certain Benedict decisions must be mined for personal motivations. Joseph Ratzinger was a devout 12-year-old in the heavily Catholic region of Bavaria when Eugenio Pacelli became Pope in 1939. Through his early years as priest and theologian, Ratzinger remained devoted to Pius until the pontiff's death in 1958. A Vatican insider once described Benedict's memory to this particular predecessor this way: "Pius is really his Pope." (See how Pius XII was perceived during his lifetime, from TIME's archives...