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Volume 47, Issue 44 | tuesday, november 5, 2013 | ndsmcobserver.com
ND senior travels to Vatican, meets Pope Francis Juan Manuel Segura and family bring “The Chapels of Notre Dame” as gift for pontiff By ANN MARIE JAKUBOWSKI News Editor
The head of the Roman Catholic Church now owns a copy of the book “The Chapels of Notre Dame,” thanks to senior Juan Manuel Segura, who traveled to Rome with his family in October to brief ly meet Pope Francis. Segura and his family have been good friends with Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mejia for the past 20 years, and he said the Cardinal’s acquaintance with Pope Francis made the meeting possible. “[Cardinal Mejia] has visited our house in Washington,
D. C., and he has confirmed and baptized a lot of members in our family,” Segura said. “It’s through him that my family and I were able to get the opportunity to go to Rome and be a part of the papal audience, especially to meet [Pope Francis] and actually shake hands with him and say a couple words.” Segura said he, his parents and two of his five siblings made the whirlwind trip to the Vatican and back, arriving in Italy on Tuesday, Oct. 1, and f lying back to the United States on Thursday, Oct. 3. They met Francis following see POPE PAGE 5
Photo courtesy of Juan Manuel Segura
Senior Juan Manuel Segura presents Pope Francis with a copy of the book “The Chapels of Notre Dame.” Segura and his family traveled to the Vatican to meet the pontiff over fall break.
Professor and ‘Movember’ promotes men’s health with facial hair team earn grant to analyze democracy By TORI ROECK
Associate News Editor
Student body president A lex Coccia may have the most iconic facial hair on campus, but he w ill blend in more this month as students participating in Movember don moustaches and beards to raise awareness of men’s health issues. Senior Steve Fox said
By HENRY GENS News Writer
see MOVEMBER PAGE 4
EMILY DANAHER | The Observer
Holy Cross Harvest collects donations for food bank By SAMANTHA CASTANEDA News Writer
T h e S a i nt M a r y ’s O f f ic e f or Socia l a nd C i v ic E n g a g e m e nt ( OSCE ) h a s j oi n e d w it h Hol y C r o s s C ol le g e a nd Not r e D a m e t o h o s t t h e Hol y C r o s s Ha r vest t h is week. T h is is t he t h i rd yea r t he i n s t it ut ion s have
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hosted t he fest iva l, Je s s ic a B u lo s a n , a s s i s t a nt d i r e c t or of OSCE , s a id . T he fest iva l a i ms to h e l p p e op le i n t h e S out h B e nd C om mu n it y w h o lack b a s ic r e s ou r c e s , B u lo s a n s a id . OSCE w i l l h o s t d i s c u s s ion s , p l a c e f o o d b a r r e l s a r ou nd t h e C ol le g e a nd e n c ou r a g e s t u d e nt s t o d on a t e a m e a l
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s w i p e i n s ol id a r it y w it h t h e hu n g r y. “T he food d r ive is t he m a i n e v e nt i n t h e Hol y C r o s s H a r v e s t ,” B u lo s a n s a id . “ We a t S a i nt M a r y ’s a r e d on a t i n g a l l of t h e f o o d a nd m on e t a r y d o n a t ion s w e g e t t o t h e Fo o d B a n k [ of ] Nor t h e r n see HARVEST PAGE 5
Scene PAGE 8
The rapidly-shifting nature of today’s political landscapes and conflicts calls for thorough understanding of democracy. This is exactly what political science professor Michael Coppedge and his collaborators are attempting to accomplish with the Varieties of Democracy project. The team, which has more than 2,000 contributing members around the world, recently received a $5.8 million grant awarded over six years to analyze an unprecedented amount of data related to democracies, Coppedge said. He is one of four principal investigators in charge of steering the largescale study and covering data from all countries and colonies in the world from the year 2000. Although previous research in the field revealed reliable general indicators of certain types of democratic systems, Coppedge said these were less useful for answering the more sophisticated questions that
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needed to be asked. “Researchers need these indicators because they’re interested in questions about the nature, causes and consequences of democracy,” Coppedge said. “The indicators that we had already really were not up to the task of measuring things in a precise enough, fine-grained enough way to be able to test the ideas that we have. They were just lying far behind the kinds of theories and models that we wanted to test.” In refining the new indicators, Coppedge said his team moved beyond the traditional American political science view of democracy in the field, which tended to focus on only the basic requirements for such government and left out rich aspects of democracy. Instead, the collaboration is examining indicators across seven broad classes of democracy, ranging from electoral to egalitarian. “We don’t endorse all of these views, but these are the views see DEMOCRACY PAGE 4
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