Bigger than Jesus?

The Pope’s funeral is starting in Rome right now. Outside my house the streets look completely deserted. Just now the fire station’s siren has started up. Even a passing train is sounding its horn though there’s no-one on the tracks. Over the last week the people here have worked themselves into a frenzy of lamentation. I’ve stopped buying local papers as there’s quite literally nothing in them except articles somehow connected to the Pope. I’ve reached the conclusion that the grief evidenced wouldn’t be any deeper and more universal if it had been Jesus who had died. Which, at least to me, smacks of that old favourite of the Popes – heresy. I’m just waiting to see someone set up a Church of the Latter Day Popes.