"Everyone waits."

I consciously avoided posting anything on the Pope, but I like this because it focuses on what I like to think he would've wanted us to see: the pageantry of both the individual and the masses. There are times when I don't want facts or palace intrigue, when I just want a story to move me and do it in a way that isn't condescending or insulting. I think this article strikes the right tone of capturing the beauty and frailty of what happened in Rome last week without going into missives about faith or politics or what the hell ever.

For what it's worth, I've seemed to gain more respect in the last week for the Pope and his mission: imagine having the kind of faith that requires you to dedicate a lifetime to tending to one billion people, in the name of God. Yes lots of horrible things have been done in the name of God, and passion & fervor in pursuit of an ideal is not always responsible. But to carry on one's shoulders the weight of an institution that stretches back to the Roman Empire, that has done more to shape the world that any other organisation or state? Dislike the Church, dispute the religion, cast doubt upon the faith, but for two decades the man both stood before the world he knew and knelt before the God he trusted.

Could he have stepped down years ago as his health deteriorated? Of course. But that's just not how it's done. In the age of Terri Schiavo and grotesque conservatism of the bumper sticker 'culture of life' variety, I think the faith of a man who both endures in the face of pain and debilitation before succumbing softly into the night because of the faith of his predecessors is heartening. Of course that is not cause to celebrate him, just as the pornographic violence of the Passion of the Christ shouldn't be reason enough to devote one's life to Jesus, but it is significant I think of the Pope's true awareness of just what he serves and who he is serving. And in the end, perhaps all that matters is that he knew.