Pope

RE POPE Benedict XVI's comments about Islam: It amazes me how leaders in the Muslim world, political or religous, say whatever they want about whoever they want, but the rest of us worry about being politically correct. Islamic extremists want to kill us. When someone critizes them, they kill innocents all over the world. Too much of America has forgotten that horrible day on 9/11. Bill Newbold Philadelphia

Local Jewish leaders hailed the Pope's visit yesterday to Rome's main synagogue, but were disappointed by his failure to recognize the state of Israel. Two Roman Catholic scholars praised the visit, the first ever by a pontiff to a Jewish house of worship, as significant, "a breakthrough sort of thing" as one of them, Temple University religion professor Leonard Swidler, put it. "It's very difficult for the pope to do anything of political significance at the moment because if he should visit Israel it would anger the Muslim world," Rabbi Albert Lewis of Temple Beth Sholom in Haddon Heights, N.J., said.

She did the red carpet as Little Red Riding Hood (in a blood-red Atelier Versace nun-inspired satin robe) with a pope-alike in full faux-Vatican regalia on her arm. Nicki Minaj at the Grammys. So scandalous! Minaj, 29, later performed "Roman Reloaded," with a stage show out of The Exorcist : She was strapped to a leather table, levitated, surrounded by roaring flames, and did a mock self-exorcism. The spectacle disgusted The View' s Sherri Shepherd . "I didn't know whether to dance or pull out my Bible and lay hands on the tv," she tweeted.

United States citizens, who thought they knew how warm tempers can get when religion enters domestic politics, last week joined the world in feeling the heat of a religious explosion on the international political scene. Cairo provided the stage, as delegates from 160 nations took up the most fateful issues at century's end: How many people can the globe sustain tomorrow, and how can nations develop resources to sustain more in the future? Leave it to the statisticians and economists, thought some, forgetting how much the clergy care about what happens in bedroom, clinic and granary.

You think Babe Ruth was a tough autograph? Well, he wasn't. In fact, the Babe willingly signed for anyone who asked him. Not so with the pope. I'm not talking about the Phillies' Paul Owens. I'm referring to John Paul II, the real pope, and the autograph he recently signed for Detroit Tigers manager Sparky Anderson. Jim Hawkins, longtime Detroit baseball writer-turned-hobby-show promoter, returned from a visit to spring training with an amusing tale about the pope's autograph.

The owners of the DiCocco Family St. Jude Shop are getting to be experts at this. When there's a presentation for the pope, call the store in Havertown. Twice in the last 15 months, the store owners have been tapped for their Benedict XVI know-how. The first time, they helped supply a specially made chair the pope used during a U.S. visit. This time, they assisted the White House in finding a gift for him. That present will be given to Benedict as part of President Obama's visit to the Vatican tomorrow.

Holy smokes! We're in the middle of Passover and Easter is nigh. That's reason this week to get our head and soul together with music of a decidedly spiritual, life-affirming nature. Why, even His Holiness Pope John Paul II is getting down and into the album-making act with "Abba Pater," a pilgrimage of the spirit inspired by the Great Jubilee of the year 2000. It's also, we suspect, an artful outreach from the public-relations office of the Vatican, intended to make the church seem more relevant to younger people.

Although the Pope will say only one Sunday mass during his 10-day U.S. visit, don't look for it on television. NFL football will block live network coverage of the mass this Sunday from San Antonio on both CBS and NBC. "We had made it clear to the Pope's people that we'd be interested in covering the mass if it could be held earlier in the day," said Lane Venardos, executive producer for CBS coverage. "But that was not possible, so we opt not to carry the mass. Football is football.

The pope's visit to the Holy Land seemed to be a game of political football, with both the Israelis and the Palestinians claiming he was rooting for their team. When John Paul II arrived in Jerusalem, the Israeli president, Ezer Weizman, welcomed him to "the eternal and indivisible capital of the State of Israel" - an unequivocal assertion of Israel's determination to maintain total sovereignty over the Holy City. Likewise, when the pope kissed a bowl of Palestinian soil - a gesture usually observed on visits to sovereign states - it led Suha Arafat, the wife of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, to exclaim: "Everybody from our Palestinian people understood it as asking for a Palestinian independent state.

When Pope John Paul II arrives Jan. 21 in the fiefdom of Fidel, Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua of Philadelphia won't be far behind. Bevilacqua and other United States cardinals will join the pope in Cuba for a trip that lasts through Jan. 25. The historic visit grew out of a Vatican meeting last year between the pope and President Fidel Castro. Bevilacqua doesn't expect to take in many of the sights on that long off-limits island where Castro has sought to shut down the Catholic church since seizing power in 1960.

There are crises of faith, and then there are crises of faith. In We Have a Pope , Michel Piccoli is having a doozy. Set in the cloistered opulence of the Vatican - and in the thrumming streets of Rome - Nanni Moretti's quietly subversive, wonderfully empathetic dramedy imagines a scenario in which the pontiff has died and the cardinals, in their cassocks and caps, go about electing a new leader. Moretti, the Italian writer, director, and star, gently mocks the process from the get-go, showing the members of the College of Cardinals convening to make their choice.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI began his eighth year as pope Tuesday after spending the waning days of his seventh driving home his view of the Catholic Church, with a divisive crackdown on dissenters and an equally divisive opening to a fringe group of traditionalists. The coming year may see more of the same as the Vatican gears up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that reshaped the Catholic Church and are key to understanding this papacy and Benedict's recent moves to quell liberal dissent and promote a more conservative brand of Catholicism.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI celebrated a very Bavarian birthday Monday, marking his 85th with his brother, bishops and a musical band from his native land at the Vatican. Monday's birthday is just the first in a week of milestones for Benedict. He marks the seventh anniversary of his election as pope on Thursday. And April 24 is the anniversary of the start of his pontificate. Despite his age and increasing frailty - he has begun using a cane on occasion - Benedict has quashed speculation of a possible resignation.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI, carrying a tall, lit candle, ushered in Christianity's most joyous celebration with an Easter vigil service Saturday night, but voiced fears that mankind is groping in darkness, unable to distinguish good from evil. Easter for Christians commemorates Christ's triumph over death with his resurrection following his crucifixion. "Life is stronger than death," Benedict, wearing white robes in a symbol of new life, told the faithful in a packed St. Peter's Basilica.

ROME - Pope Benedict XVI encouraged those threatened by unemployment and other economic woes to draw courage and strength from the suffering of the crucified Jesus Christ as the pontiff presided over a Good Friday candlelit Way of the Cross procession at the ancient Colosseum. Benedict, who turns 85 on April 16, didn't carry the cross during the procession. Instead, he listened to mediations on suffering that he asked an elderly Italian couple to compose for the traditional ceremony.

HAVANA - Cuba has honored an appeal by Pope Benedict XVI and declared this week's Good Friday a holiday for the first time since the early days following the island's 1959 revolution, though a decision on whether the move will be permanent will have to wait. The Communist government said in a communique Saturday that the decision was made in light of the success of Benedict's "transcendental visit" to the country, which wrapped up Wednesday. It said the Council of Ministers, Cuba's supreme governing body, will decide later whether to make the holiday permanent.

HAVANA - Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday concluded his first trip to the Spanish-speaking Americas, launched with a condemnation of Marxism and drug-war violence and ending with a forceful plea for "genuine freedom" as he preached from the symbolic heart of Cuba's leftist revolution. Standing under larger-than-life portraits of revolutionary heroes such as Che Guevara, the pope admonished Cuban authorities for not doing enough to allow the public exercise of religious faith. Later, he met with former President Fidel Castro, and the two octogenarians joked about the hardships of being old men. Dressed in a gilded miter and robes of purple in keeping with the Lenten season, Benedict rode the popemobile into the Plaza of the Revolution and celebrated an open-air Mass witnessed by an estimated 300,000 Cubans and other Latin Americans.

HAVANA - Pope Benedict XVI prayed for freedom and renewal "for the greater good of all Cubans" before the nation's patron saint Tuesday, but the island's communist leaders quickly rejected the Roman Catholic leader's appeal for political change after five decades of one-party rule. The exchange came hours ahead of a 55-minute closed-door meeting with President Raul Castro on the pontiff's second day on the island. Brief video feeds showed Castro greeting Benedict at the Presidential Palace and then later seeing him off. There was no visit to see Fidel Castro, though a Vatican spokesman would not rule out the possibility of a meeting before the pope departs Wednesday afternoon.

SANTIAGO, Cuba - Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Cuba on Monday in the footsteps of his more famous predecessor, gently pressing the island's longtime communist leaders to push through "legitimate" changes their people desire, while criticizing the excesses of capitalism. In contrast to the raucous welcome Benedict received in Mexico, his arrival in Cuba's second city was relatively subdued. While President Raul Castro greeted him at the airport with a 21-cannon salute and military honor guard, few ordinary Cubans lined Benedict's motorcade route into town and the pope barely waved from his glassed-in popemobile.

MIAMI - Natalia Martinez speaks with a clinical distance when discussing her family's decision to leave Cuba two decades ago. But the graduate student's cool demeanor falls away when she speaks of returning to her homeland for the first time this week during Pope Benedict XVI's visit. "I am excited. I am nervous, and I'm anticipating confusion," Martinez, 25, said. She could be speaking for many of the more than 300 Cuban Americans who will form a delegation to Cuba led by Miami's Roman Catholic archbishop, Thomas Wenski.