The lines in front of illustrious coffins are filled by television. We saw it in London when Queen Elizabeth died, and we'll see it again today in Rome, on Pope Francis's final day of funeral. Surely, among those who file in, there is personal feeling and spiritual devotion, but when a death is global, television makes the line to see the deceased the place to be, and people call people.
The happy alliance between monarchies and television cameras has been going on for over sixty years, and it continues to work its magic through trumpets, organs, uniforms, chasubles, colonnades and overhead cameras, and from time to time through an extreme close-up of the ent. Pius XII was the first Pope to go before a camera, the opening of the Second Vatican Council was televised and, until recently, viewers were warned that the papal blessing urbi et orbi It was also "worth it" for those who were following him through the airwaves.
Francis has not been as much of a television pope as the rock starJohn Paul II, always performing before crowds, was a small screen legend. But the days of the television monopoly are over. Today, everyone smiles for the camera. "avinagrado" [sic] with the freedom that comes with Jesuit intelligence, age, and position, he has been a pope of selfies, seeking out close contact through social media and knowing that he was being recorded at all times by the cell phones of those who received them in abundance.
