I love that picture of the Pope everyone's using and which was on the front page of the Chron today, the one where he's in some billowing white and gold cape and he's kind of looking down on the ground with a really determined face on his look. It's superhero-ish- Pope Man! Hell, throw on some sunglasses and it's the best U2 cover photo never taken.

I feel kind of bad because I couldn't help himself and have been snarking on the Pope's death for a week now, starting with this here bloggy blog. Then, the day he died, I let loose. Like my arguement that they should make the election of the new Pope into a reality TV show, like "American Idol" or something. All the competing Cardinals would compete on Catholic things in front of a world-wide audience who would vote for him. They'd do stuff like sing the pslams or do an Excorcism or argue how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Maybe even give a speech about what they'd do if they won. Then there was another discussion I couldn't help get myself involved in, one at dinner, where somebody speculated that on his death bed, the Pope's last dying wishes was to finally get some. And so the Cardinals brought in the Holy Ho's and let the Pope get down. I mean the Dude was basically an 80 year old virgin. You gotta think that as he's going through his life and remembering everything, he's kind of wishing he knew what it was like. You gotta figure too, that being the Pope, the dude's got so many points in his favor that excepting maybe murdering people, he's gotta be a first ballot shoe-in for getting into Heaven even if he finally has some sex. The dude ran the Church, fought the Nazis, led his people against Communism, and sacrificed his sex life. What else could he have done?

Oh wait, I'm snarking on the guy.

What I meant to say is that I feel bad about it because even I admit it's in bad taste. The guy just died. Not only that, I liked him. He was a good guy with a big ole heart who stood up for what he believed in. I may not agree with everything he preached or think a lot of the stuff about Catholicism is whacko, but you can pretty much say that about any religion, including my own. In other words, I'm sad to see him go. I think ultimate tribute to what he represented is that I saw on the news he was the first Pope to go into a Mosque, the first Pope to go into a Synagouge, and the first Pope to go into a Protestant Church. Which is pretty amazing when you think about it, not just the fact that he made it a point to preach inter-faith tolerance and to reach out to others, but that in the almost 2000 year old history of the Church, no other Pope did the same. In other words, R.I.P John Paul II