Rather late to this thread, and I have neither the time nor inclination at present to thoroughly read 300+ posts bickering about if the Pope was the Earthly Incarnate of Good or Evil.
I will also preface this by saying that, though I grew up Catholic, I have no love for the Church, nor for religions in general.
However...
The SO lives within spitting distance of San Pietro. Though neither of us believe in God/Dog/Bob/whathaveyou, Friday night we briefly stopped in Piazza San Pietro during the rosary services. I was struck by the quiet; in a country where 2 or 3 cell phones to a person is not unusual, not once in 30 minutes did I hear some tinny polyphonic tune. And I saw only one person smoking, furtively hiding his lit cig as one hides a joint.
Saturday after work, I once again made my way across town to the SO's place. We had just finished eating dinner when the news of Wojtyla's death arrived via SMS. We quickly grabbed our things and pelted towards San Pietro. Many people were actually leaving the piazza, as yet unaware that the pope had passed on.
We arrived to an unsettling quiet, punctured only by the occasional sob. The silence stretched on; saying that the entire piazza was stunned or shocked would be misleading, if only in the sense that in light of his serious health condition, death was expected. But there it was. An entire piazza of people all with suspiciously bright eyes and ruddy noses, if not with tears rolling down their cheeks. I felt vaguely ghoulish and somehow intrusive as we tiptoed our way further into the piazza.
From a small clearing behind me, a young man in his late teens/early twenties sounded a chord on his guitar, an attack on the instrument. It was an uncertain thin to do in the midst of that silence. You could sense a hesitancy yet he continued the introductory chords in the same strong manner. And then he began to sing.Allelujah, risorgerà Clear. Pure. Strong.
