{"id":3730,"date":"2006-12-30T22:50:32","date_gmt":"2006-12-30T22:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-ahead.html"},"modified":"2006-12-30T22:50:32","modified_gmt":"2006-12-30T22:50:32","slug":"looking-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/looking-ahead.html","title":{"rendered":"Looking ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Thavis at CNS looks at Pope Benedict’s 2007 plans – so far.<\/a><\/p>\n

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The year 2007 will see "ad limina" visits by bishops from places on four continents, including Italy, Ukraine, Slovakia, Portugal, Serbia, Kenya, Togo, Benin, Gabon, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Korea and Laos.<\/p>\n

Pope Benedict plans to travel to Brazil in mid-May to open a meeting of the Latin American bishops’ council, or CELAM, and to Austria in September for a Marian pilgrimage. The Brazil trip is his first across an ocean, and Vatican planners are doing all they can to keep it short and sweet.<\/p>\n

There’s also a chance the pope may visit the United Nations. An informal invitation has been floated and the pope is said to be considering it — the most likely hypothesis would be a visit in late September to address the opening of the U.N. General Assembly.<\/p>\n

"The door is open, and the idea is circulating, but nothing’s been decided yet," one Vatican official said.<\/p>\n

The pope’s native Germany also wants him back for another visit, this time in the capital Berlin. Other invitations have come from the Middle East and Africa, but trips there are considered less probable. He’ll make several trips in Italy, including a pilgrimage in June to Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis.<\/p>\n

The pope, who turns 80 in May, plans sometime in the spring to publish his book, "Jesus of Nazareth: From His Baptism to His Transfiguration," a work aimed at bringing a vivid portrait of Jesus to a wide audience.<\/p>\n

Before then, other papal documents are expected to arrive; they include a post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist and, according to Vatican sources, a document issued "motu proprio" (on his own initiative) that would expand permission to use the pre-Vatican II Tridentine Mass.<\/p>\n

Sometime early in the year will appear a preparatory document for the 2008 Synod of Bishops on "The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church."<\/p>\n

The pope has indicated he may name new cardinals on a more frequent basis than his predecessor, and he’ll have an opportunity to do so again this year. By the end of February, he’ll have at least 10 vacancies among the 120 cardinal-electors, and by June he’ll have at least 14 openings.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Thavis at CNS looks at Pope Benedict’s 2007 plans – so far. The year 2007 will see "ad limina" visits by bishops from places on four continents, including Italy, Ukraine, Slovakia, Portugal, Serbia, Kenya, Togo, Benin, Gabon, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Korea and Laos. Pope Benedict plans to travel to Brazil in…<\/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-3730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nLooking ahead - 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\/12\/looking-ahead.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Looking ahead - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Thavis at CNS looks at Pope Benedict’s 2007 plans – so far. The year 2007 will see "ad limina" visits by bishops from places on four continents, including Italy, Ukraine, Slovakia, Portugal, Serbia, Kenya, Togo, Benin, Gabon, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Korea and Laos. 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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\/3730","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=3730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}