So millions of people are marching by the Pope's remains to pay their last respects. Some people have been in line for days. They are coming to Italy from all over the world to say goodbye. For many it is their first time traveling to Italy and for most it is their first time seeing the Pope.
Isn't that just a little bit sick? I could understand a Pope groupie gathering the clan and hightailing it to Vatican City for a last look at the body but we're talking about people who've spent their entire lives without glimpsing His Popliness suddenly feeling the call to go look at a dead body.
What? You couldn't make the trip while the guy was alive? Do you prefer a viewing of a dead, made up, preserved, rigormortised* Pope to the live guy saying mass?
It's really creaping me out. It's like some death cult that comes out of the woodwork to get their jollies over a corpse.
Freaks.
* If he's stiff enough he'd be a Popesicle.
Aw. You ex-Catholics are just so cute when you're horrified.
But seriously, I don't get the practice of body viewing in general. At my grandfather's I watched my mom stand in the receiving line with her two siblings having to greet everyone and . . . and meanwhile there's my grandfather's body lying right there, all too-rouged up and everything and, I don't know, I just don't get it. Any of it. It makes no sense. I couldn't figure out what weirded me out more: The people who cried (hey, it's his body, but it's obviously no longer him) or the people who ignored it and were laughing and chatting away.
Viewings. They're just weird.
I heard they didn't shave his stubble so the viewers could see his "suffering". Interesting.
What I find even more sickening is the people taking pictures. You can see the flashes going off on TV.
gack
I couldn't help but notice the difference in the way the pope's wake and burial and those people attending have differed from those similar events in other parts of the world- say Yassar Arafatt's burial earlier this year...
Nice polite lines, people praying, talking quietly, singing, no assault rifles in sight any where.
I wonder if that's significant...
Nate ~
I noticed (and marveled) at the same thing! No hysteria, no wailing, no guns. It's a nice peaceful send off for a man of peace. The Pope's funeral reflects the man's life. I guess Arafat's funeral reflected his life.
I'll think of that the next time I see one of those hysterical "funeral" street displays in Palestine on the news.