Papal Power

I’ve been watching the televised funeral of Pope John Paul II for over three hours now. It’s pretty amazing – all the people at the Vatican and around the world, all those world leaders and all the ritual and organisation.

As I sit watching along with millions of others, it must be crossing minds. If all the leaders that are sat but yards from each other just got together afterwards for a drink someone might just say:

“Hey, we’re all here. We’re not killing each other. Why can’t it always be like this?”

Oh, how they’d laugh. Too much at stake for them I guess.

But what if the million people in Rome decided to join in? Just move on down through the cordons and surround the dignitaries. No violence. No chanting. Let one person move toward a Cardinal and say:

“Hey, we’re all here. We’re not killing each other. Why can’t it always be like this?”

Oh, how they’d laugh. Nervously.

And maybe they’d realise that they mean very little. Because even in a tiny place like the Vatican, the World’s most important men and women are hopelessly outnumbered.

Now, we don’t have to get all Bolshevik about it, but all those leaders together without their armies are just like us. They tend to be a little greedier, insecure, more manipulative and self obsessed but they are just human beings. So as the bells rang out across the world and millions watched the live feed from Vatican TV they’d witness a little international revolution. And maybe it’d scare the hell out of the nicely suited and robed leaders who are as likely to go to war over wealth and power, as they are to attend a funeral of a media Pope.

Never going to be that easy though, I know. Even I, dreamily imagining an equal and peaceful world felt the weight of the difficulties achieving it. As the news cut to masses around the world I noticed that in Kirkuk an Iraqi worshipper was wearing an eighties Rod Stewart tour t-shirt.