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The immediate reaction was one of stunned paralysis. Journalists who spend their careers parsing Vatican statements for hidden political agendas found themselves completely unmoored by the brevity of the response. To call an entire nation “wounded” is to categorize it as a patient in critical condition, a societal entity suffering from deep, internal lacerations that no amount of economic growth or military superiority can suture. It is a word that carries the gravity of an autopsy performed while the subject is still breathing.
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