Faith Works 4-25-2025
Jeff Gill
Farewells and continuity, with popes and otherwise
___
My first papal funeral was black and white, grainy in a then-amazing overseas satellite hookup. Pope John XXIII died in the summer of 1963, and young as I was, it became blurred in memory with a very different yet quite similar series of honors in November, with the death of President Kennedy.
Still, I recall my mother explaining to me the significance of the ceremony (or ceremonies, as they do indeed blend together over sixty years later), the rituals and processions and the great sense of solemnity around it all.
Not being Catholic myself, I paid less attention to his successor, Pope Paul VI, but when he died in August of 1978, I happened to be in a radio station with an AP ticker, a black box around a teletype machine. It had a bell, which rang for a new story coming in, to tell someone it was time to tear it off. A big story and the bell rang twice, rarely three times, which meant you ran over to the machine immediately to see what was up. (Note to self: explain the world before the internet HERE.)
The bell rang, rang, then rang again, and I followed the news director over (John Bartholomew, WNWI, Wonderful North West Indiana), where he tore off the flimsy paper, and read "Pope dies." It was big news.
As it happens, less than two months later, at the end of September, I was in the newsroom of the student newspaper at Purdue. We were looking over a layout for the next day's paper, blue pencil marks and razor cut graphics pasted onto a mock-up. The AP ticker was across the newsroom, much larger than the radio studio I had been in last month.
It rang on September 28, 1978, and no one took much notice, because it rang all the time. Then quickly a second, then a third, and people all around looked up. And it rang a fourth time. The only time I ever heard that. A senior editor strode over to the device, ripped off the output, and gasped. He turned to the newsroom, and said "Pope John Paul just died." The layout editor next to me slid the mock-up of tomorrow's paper off the light table. It was now trash.
Pope John Paul II, "the Polish pope," would enter his pontificate the next month, and serve over a quarter-century. His passing, after a long struggle with age and debility at the end of his long life, was at age 84 in 2005. The papal funeral for him gathered together four kings, five queens, some 70 presidents and prime ministers, plus a dozen or more presiders over other faiths. Millions pressed into Rome and Vatican City, and at least a quarter million were crowded into St. Peter's Square and the basilica itself. Presiding over the ceremonies was the man who would succeed him, as Pope Benedict XVI.
Benedict would serve less than eight years, then took the relatively unprecedented step of retiring, a possibility that has haunted these last few years of Francis's pontificate. Benedict's funeral just over two years ago, on the last day of December 2022, was a more muted affair. He died at age 95, with the services presided over by Pope Francis, the first time this had happened in over two hundred years.
Now, with Francis's death at age 88, we are back in more familiar territory. He will lay in state at St. Peter's and Vatican officials will organize and preside over his funeral even as the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church gather to hold a conclave, a special session to elect the new Bishop of Rome, and Pontiff or "Bridge Builder" of the church.
Many of us non-Catholics will be praying for wisdom and discernment in their gathering. The papacy is a symbolic figure who speaks to many, and popes have opportunities few humans have to address the times in which they live.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's moved by ritual even when it's not his own tradition. Tell him about memorial services which moved you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
Jeff Gill
Farewells and continuity, with popes and otherwise
___
My first papal funeral was black and white, grainy in a then-amazing overseas satellite hookup. Pope John XXIII died in the summer of 1963, and young as I was, it became blurred in memory with a very different yet quite similar series of honors in November, with the death of President Kennedy.
Still, I recall my mother explaining to me the significance of the ceremony (or ceremonies, as they do indeed blend together over sixty years later), the rituals and processions and the great sense of solemnity around it all.
Not being Catholic myself, I paid less attention to his successor, Pope Paul VI, but when he died in August of 1978, I happened to be in a radio station with an AP ticker, a black box around a teletype machine. It had a bell, which rang for a new story coming in, to tell someone it was time to tear it off. A big story and the bell rang twice, rarely three times, which meant you ran over to the machine immediately to see what was up. (Note to self: explain the world before the internet HERE.)
The bell rang, rang, then rang again, and I followed the news director over (John Bartholomew, WNWI, Wonderful North West Indiana), where he tore off the flimsy paper, and read "Pope dies." It was big news.
As it happens, less than two months later, at the end of September, I was in the newsroom of the student newspaper at Purdue. We were looking over a layout for the next day's paper, blue pencil marks and razor cut graphics pasted onto a mock-up. The AP ticker was across the newsroom, much larger than the radio studio I had been in last month.
It rang on September 28, 1978, and no one took much notice, because it rang all the time. Then quickly a second, then a third, and people all around looked up. And it rang a fourth time. The only time I ever heard that. A senior editor strode over to the device, ripped off the output, and gasped. He turned to the newsroom, and said "Pope John Paul just died." The layout editor next to me slid the mock-up of tomorrow's paper off the light table. It was now trash.
Pope John Paul II, "the Polish pope," would enter his pontificate the next month, and serve over a quarter-century. His passing, after a long struggle with age and debility at the end of his long life, was at age 84 in 2005. The papal funeral for him gathered together four kings, five queens, some 70 presidents and prime ministers, plus a dozen or more presiders over other faiths. Millions pressed into Rome and Vatican City, and at least a quarter million were crowded into St. Peter's Square and the basilica itself. Presiding over the ceremonies was the man who would succeed him, as Pope Benedict XVI.
Benedict would serve less than eight years, then took the relatively unprecedented step of retiring, a possibility that has haunted these last few years of Francis's pontificate. Benedict's funeral just over two years ago, on the last day of December 2022, was a more muted affair. He died at age 95, with the services presided over by Pope Francis, the first time this had happened in over two hundred years.
Now, with Francis's death at age 88, we are back in more familiar territory. He will lay in state at St. Peter's and Vatican officials will organize and preside over his funeral even as the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church gather to hold a conclave, a special session to elect the new Bishop of Rome, and Pontiff or "Bridge Builder" of the church.
Many of us non-Catholics will be praying for wisdom and discernment in their gathering. The papacy is a symbolic figure who speaks to many, and popes have opportunities few humans have to address the times in which they live.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's moved by ritual even when it's not his own tradition. Tell him about memorial services which moved you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
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