bye bye karol
Holy shit, the Pope just died. 18:37 Italy time, whatever that is. That was
about forty minutes ago. Weird.
Now, those of you who know me know I have many issues with organized religion,
and I'm probably as far away from Catholic as one could get. But this
signifies the end of an era. John Paul II was Pope for twenty years, and
during that time, he did a lot for the world: for one, apologizing for the
horror of the holocaust; for another, acknowledging that there was a lot of
corruption in the RCC; and for another, speaking out against the capitalist
greed of so many powerful nations. He was still stuck on the contraception
issue, even in consideration of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, but you gotta
give him some credit.
I remember reading a National Geographic many years ago, and there was an
article about the Pope, celebrating his early years. He spent a lot of time
being a bohemian in the mountains of Poland, and I'll never forget this
picture I saw of him, beret on his head, joint in his mouth, writing in his
diary. That's stuck with me over the years, and told me that, despite the
dictates of this ancient institution, that has changed more in the past fifty
years than it did in the previous thousand, but which still has a long way to
go, the Pope was a really cool guy at heart.
As his bishops announced, he has gone home. Bless him.
Posted by Ally at April 2, 2005 05:19 PM