{"id":1502,"date":"2006-06-04T09:42:26","date_gmt":"2006-06-04T09:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/is-he-headed-our-way.html"},"modified":"2006-06-04T09:42:26","modified_gmt":"2006-06-04T09:42:26","slug":"is-he-headed-our-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/is-he-headed-our-way.html","title":{"rendered":"Is he headed our way?"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to an article posted in the Papa Ratzinger Forum (scroll down)…yes!<\/a><\/p>\n

Possibly for 2007:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

He will be in Brazil 2-3 days, after which he will head north to Caracas. Why Venezuela? Because, beyond its geopolitical importance, it is the nation that is carrying out political leadership activity aimed at all of Latin America; because the Church, which has a watchful attitude, if not open opposition, towards President Hugo Chavez, is in need of support in that country (it was not by chance that Benedict XVI made the Archbishop of Caracas a cardinal, to give him power and prestige with respect to the government); and because from Veneuela, the Pope wishes to address himself to all of Central America and Cuba. <\/p>\n

From Caracas, Benedict will travel to Mexico City and the Sanctuary of Guadalupe, very famous and much visited (millions of pilgrims every year), the place where the native Juan Diego had a vision of the Virgin, whose image was imprinted on his cloak, according to tradition \u2013 the first image of a native Indian Madonna. It simply is not conceivable that a Pope whould travel across the Atlantic \u2013 for perhaps the only time in this case \u2013 and not visit Mexico, semper fidelis (always faithful), a nation which lives with an intense popular devotion as well as an equally strong secularism. The tensions between Church and state are permanent.<\/p>\n

On his first trip there in 1979, John Paul II could have been arrested for wearing a cassock in public, something that was prohibited by law. <\/p>\n

Finally, the last stop – New York, with two very important moments. He will address the United Nations General Assembly, where Paul VI in 1965 and John Paul II in 1995 both delivered historic speeches. Above all, however, he will be there to pray at Ground Zero, for the victims of terrorism.<\/p>\n

This is a mission that his predecessor had wanted to do in July 2002 on his way to World Youth Day in Toronto. But two things decided against it: The first was the Pope\u2019s health which had already started to decline. <\/p>\n

But the bigger reason was the political climate. It was the peak of polemics over the \u201cclash of civilizations.\u201d A few months earlier, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Pope\u2019s Secretary of State, had said: \u201cThey cannot ask us to place ourselves behind cannons,\u201d and the image of the Pope praying at the still-smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers would have immediately become the icon of an anti-Taliban crusade. <\/p>\n

Now it is different. The context in which Benedict XVI will find himself will be very different: \u201cFreedom Tower\u201d, a crystal needle that will project a ray of light heavenwards, will be under construction, along with its surrounding urban amenities, its gardens, the memorial pools containing the names of all the dead, and other buildings in the complex. The Pope\u2019s presence will be a gesture of remembrance and homage to the victims of the attack, but also a sign of hope for the future. From New York, the Pope will return to Rome. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to an article posted in the Papa Ratzinger Forum (scroll down)…yes! Possibly for 2007: He will be in Brazil 2-3 days, after which he will head north to Caracas. Why Venezuela? Because, beyond its geopolitical importance, it is the nation that is carrying out political leadership activity aimed at all of Latin America; because…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nIs he headed our way? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/is-he-headed-our-way.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is he headed our way? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"According to an article posted in the Papa Ratzinger Forum (scroll down)…yes! Possibly for 2007: He will be in Brazil 2-3 days, after which he will head north to Caracas. Why Venezuela? 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}