| Dead popes being monarchs are servants to history. During their lifetime their wishes may become commands, but once they are dead, their personal preferences are interred with them. Pope John Paul II, who died on 2 April 2005, had expressed the wish it seems to be buried in his homeland - Poland - but left the final decision to his cardinals. They decreed otherwise, and had him buried instead within the vault of St Peter's Basilica, to become part of the foundation - like St Peter himself - upon which the Roman Catholic Church stands. |
| Cannily, though, Pope John Paul II indicated no preference as to who should succeed him, leaving it to the College of Cardinals to elect the next pope. And the man they have selected is the person instrumental in their own appointments - their long-serving Dean, the German Cardinal Ratzinger, a man close to the late Pope for so many years that the faithful would have understood had he adopted as his papal name John Paul III, instead of his declared choice of Benedict XVI. |
| Television coverage of the death of the 264th pope and the subsequent election a week later of his successor enabled millions of Catholics across the globe - from South America to Polynesia - and non-Catholics alike to watch the majestic rituals that one would have thought should have been perfected by now. Yet the very mechanism of election - a secret conclave, conducted within the sealed Sistine Chapel - seemed in its operation while quaint and archaic, yet oddly disturbing. It was as if the crimson-robed princes of the church could be trusted to elect their leader but that trust fell short of maintaining secrecy about their final decision. [EXTRACT] |
| Published in DAWN 28 April 2005, titled The Link across the LOC, and reprinted in WHEN BUSH COMES TO SHOVE & OTHER WRITINGS (2006) |
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