Who is that person the mighty are coming to bury in Rome tomorrow? Is it for the man who preached against burning fossil fuels that the great and the good are flying in their intercontinental jets to pay their last respects? Are the would-be colonisers and land-grabbers gathering to praise the peace-lover who Zoom-called Catholics under siege in Gaza at 7pm every night? What part of a man who chose to live more humbly than his predecessors will be reflected in the pomp and circumstance of his funeral?
WH Auden wrote in the poem he entitled In Memory of WB Yeats that “the words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living”. Pope Francis tried to guard against such modification by requesting that he be laid to rest in just one coffin instead of the traditional three papal coffins made of elm, cypress and lead, and that he be buried with dignity “like any Christian”. But he could not prevent his death from turning into a spectacle of the sort of privilege and hypocrisy he deprecated. Nor could he stop his spirit being banished before he is even buried.
Journalists have swooped en masse upon the Eternal City to record every swing of a thurible, every state ruler’s facial expression at tomorrow’s funeral. They will not be disappointed for there will be VIPs galore willing, in the immortal words of Verona Murphy, to “make a holy show” of themselves, literally.
Topping the list of elites will be the twice-divorced and thrice-married sexual assailant Donald Trump, who wants to conquer Greenland, Gaza and Canada; is ordering mass deportations from the US; and is attempting to crush universities, the judiciary and truth in the news. Rather than suggesting he stay away, the Holy See’s gatekeepers will accord him and his entourage a red-carpet welcome. The last time this hawker of his own-branded bible famously sat in a church, he demanded an apology from the Episcopalian bishop Mariann Budde for pleading from the pulpit that mercy be shown to immigrants, gays, lesbians and transgender people. Trump need not brace himself for any mouthy woman bishop tomorrow.
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Whole battalions of dignitaries from countries with booming weapons industries will assemble in St Peter’s Square, watched over by the Swiss Guards and the gendarmerie of Vatican City. Fighter jets will patrol the sky. Anti-drone weapons will be at the ready. Up to 170 foreign delegations are expected. Ireland, alone, is to be represented by President Michael D Higgins and Sabina along with the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste. How many starving children could be fed for the price of that security bill?
What these days in Rome demonstrate is that, no matter who becomes the Pope, the institution will outlive and out-rule him
Don’t expect any civic leaders who actually practise what Francis preached to be given top-priority seats. Will Trump, Macron, Merz and Starmer shove down the line to make space for Mary Robinson and Greta Thunberg, dogged campaigners to save this planet that the Pope called “our common home”? Will the Red Crescent or Unrwa or Médecins Sans Frontières, who risk and sometimes give their lives to save others, fill the front rows? And what of the migrants in camps like Lampedusa, the Italian island he chose for the first visit of his papacy “to reawaken our consciences and recall our responsibilities”? Will the princes of the Church bow to them?
The devout among the globe’s 1.4 billion Catholics and those cradle Catholics and non-Catholics who have been inspired by Francis’s message of humanity are entitled to share in a fitting farewell to him, but the funeral dignity he wished for already looks in jeopardy. There has been no time to declutter the Vatican’s ostentatious wealth before the obsequies for a man who derided consumerism as a “plague” and a “cancer”. The stallholders will, as usual, make hay flogging their souvenir holy water fonts, keyrings and canvas bags. The tour guides will guide. The hotels will burst at the seams. The restaurant queues will be out the door.
The sightseers were unavoidable on Wednesday as they lofted their smartphones to scavenge pictures of the dead pope in his open coffin during the procession to St Peter’s Basilica. Why on earth would anybody want such a macabre picture other than as proof of the brag that “I was there”?
[ Pope Francis’s death silences a voice for the voicelessOpens in new window ]
Since his death on Easter Monday the posthumous eulogies to Francis have incessantly mentioned his commitment to “equality”, but the procession of cardinals that preceded his remains for his removal to the basilica affirmed that the Church’s concept of equality does not apply equally. There is no starker reminder to the female of the species of our lesser standing than a pope’s funeral. Other than the head-to-toe-clad nuns on the sidelines and a thin sprinkling of women among the dignitaries – EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, to name two – the men-only club will be out in force. Even Francis “the reformer” could not assail that bastion.
The perniciousness of that discrimination and how it propagates unconscious bias beyond the church has been evident in the speculation about which man will succeed him, and the occasional lament that there has never been an Irish pope. Lads, may I point out that there has never been a woman pope, or cardinal, or bishop or priest? Ireland accounts for just 0.06 per cent of the world’s 8.2 billion people. Females account for half of them.
What these days in Rome demonstrate is that, no matter who becomes the Pope, the institution will outlive and out-rule him. Pope Francis began working on his autobiography, Hope, in 2019 with the intention that it would not be published until after his death. He changed his mind and brought its publication forward when he saw how the world’s ruling ethics were rapidly going to hell in a handcart. True to its name, the book gives its reader some hope; exactly what is needed in our time of wars, pestilence, climate damage, atrocious poverty and Maga madness.
The biggest loss the world has to mourn this weekend is not that of the titular head of an organised religion but that of a voice of decency. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, may you rest in peace.
