The BBC has just announced the news the world has been waiting for over the past 72 hours, that Pope John Paul II has died.
I'm not a Roman Catholic; I've never recognised the authority of the Pope; and in many ways I disagree with the ultra-conservative views he held. I even found it strange beyond words the way the media reported his final days as if there was nothing else going on in the world - as if Mugabe hadn't won a land-slide rigged election in Zimbabwe - as if the very world stopped spinning and held its breath...And yet I find myself moved by his passing.
I found myself moved, almost to tears, by a conversation with my Catholic next-door-neighbour-but-one over the garden fences this morning; as she planted an ornamental rose tree and dedicated it to John Paul II, and I hung out the washing on the line...we spoke of life, and death, and how the death of a believer is at once both happy and sad all mixed up together...
It is a funny thing how one man's death can touch so many lives, who did not even know they could be touched by him.
isn't it strange. it seems like people recognise the importance of what he stood for.
ReplyDeleteone of the things that struck me about the news of his last few days was the number of comments about the way he faced death. People seemed to find it remarkable that he was serene and calm.