Quotable & Notable
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Issue Date:  May 6, 2005

Quotable & Notable

“I used to hope for a new Pope John XXIII, a liberal pope. But now I'm hoping for, frankly, a Mikhail Gorbachev. I want a leader of the church who's going to do for Catholicism what Gorbachev did for communism -- facing the truth of the end of an old story that has outrun its time.”

-- Bestselling author James Carroll discussing his hopes for the new papacy with interviewer Bill Moyers

“There were no folk songs or anything like that. It’s a different style.”

-- Cardinal Francis George of Chicago remembering that after the election of Pope John Paul II, the new pope led the cardinals in singing Polish folk songs. The cardinals sang in Latin this time, George said.

“He fulfilled the first requisite for being pope: He looks good in white. And in Germany his book Salz der Erde [Salt of the Earth] dislodged Harry Potter as Amazon’s No. 1 bestseller.”

-- Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal writing in a column headlined, “You have to love a pope who loves St. Augustine”

“His presidency will stand as a constant reminder that this institution, which calls on the nations it bullies to exercise ‘good governance and democratization’ is run like a medieval monarchy.”

-- Journalist and commentator George Monbiot saying that Paul Wolfowitz’s appointment as World Bank president “highlights the profoundly unfair and undemocratic nature of decision-making at the bank”

National Catholic Reporter, May 6, 2005

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