I’m watching CNN right now too, and they’re doing a pretty respectful job of it.
Gracious, the Eastern Right church leaders are impressive-looking, and their choral setting has been the most interesting so far.
Eastern Rites. :smack:
More caffe for Matt!
Our guys look like Quakers next to those beautiful Eastern vestments. And did everybody see all the rabbis and Muslims in the crowd? I know I saw Hamid Karzai.
One of the guys I’m watching with was a boy soprano and is enjoying the Western choir too.
Loved the crowd chanting “Santo! Santo!” Do we have to wait 25 years or am I thinking of putting people on postage stamps?
MSNBC is doing a fantastic job. No one is saying anything, other than to translate some of the prayers, as they are being spoken. They’re letting it roll without breaking in with any ‘chat’ at all.
I watched a bit on NRK (Norwegian National Broadcasting) and was impressed. They had a commentator who was not only clearly fluent in Italian, but also familiar with Catholicism. Neither one of those is exactly common in Norway.
Very moving ceremony. Very touching to see so many dignitaries from so many backgrounds in the congregation. Very reassuring to know that it’s all over and nobody got through security who shouldn’t have.
Nah. I do wonder though, is the Pope buried in the woods?
Apparently everyone is going to watch the Pope’s funeral, whether they want to or not. I wake up to 1010 WINS wondering why they’re giving the traffic and weather in latin. Shit. Turn on the TV. Switch from channel to channel to channel to channel to channel. Pope Pope Pope Pope Pope Pope.
Some of us would like to know if we’ll need an umbrella today or whether to wear the heavy coat and how the traffic is on Route 3. If the Pope jumped out of his coffin and yelled “Gotcha ya!,” that would be worth constant coverage on every network.
Anderson Cooper is one of the rare breed of television journalists who knows when to shut up, and when he must speak, he seems to only ask pretty intelligent questions.
He’s gonna make some woman very lucky. 
CNNs coverage was very good today. I’ve never seen so much applause at a funeral, though.
It startled me too, but CBC referred to it as “a traditional Mediterranean gesture of respect,” which I guess explains it. The world leaders were applauding too.
I caught the whole thing on the Vatican website’s streaming video. Anyone else play “spot the world leader”? I got the Bushes, Hamid Karzai, Juan Carlos and Sofia, and Harald and Sonja, at least.
I watched on C-SPAN, which ran the Vatican TV feed and the commentator, an American bishop, said that applause at a funeral was a traditional sign of respect for the deceased at Italian funerals.
I found it amusing that commentators on three different channels had three different translations for what the crowd was chanting at one point. Same crowd, same chant, same video feed, but one network said it was “Santo”, one said “Magnus”, and one was “We Love you” in Polish.
But I only watched a few minutes of it. I was glad there wasn’t much talking, just the occasional translation of what was going on.
whom ever did the seating chart had some interesting pairings. israel, syria, and iran close to each other? very interesting. i wonder if they were marked off or just luck of the draw.
lek walensa (sp) seems to have held up well. he looked rather good.
I caught the tail end of it in the a.m. on EWTN and New York’s channel 11 (I get it on cable); then this evening got it from the start on EWTN and CNN, which for rebroadcast showed it whole but broken into 22-minute segments. If still wishing to see it watch yer updated cable listings to see if EWTN or CSPAN will run it again (they’ll probably sell the DVD soon enough).
BTW, matt, around here we do also have applause at funerals of notables, though nowhere near to the extent of Italy. And on the specifics of the rite, I, too, was impressed by the participation of the patriarchs and metropolitans of the Eastern Rite Churches, their prayer and chant (their choral was something very good to start the day with). Even more than anything in the latinate rite, an element of conection to history of a religion that, after all, was born in the East. And I noticed how their form of address for the departed during the prayer was, every time, his proper pastoral title, “Epískopos Romis” – Bishop of Rome (the translation saying “Pope of Rome”: in either case, reminder of the identity).
…and it seemed their hats were far more aerodynamically suited for the windy conditions than conventional mitres would have been…
Got a kick out of the first lector (or rather, lectrice) being a Latin American, reading a passage about the origin of the pastoral mission of the Church. They know where the strength is… And the Gospel reading was a bit melancholy, when Jesus tells Peter, “in you youth, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted… in your old age others will dress you, and you will lift your hands and they will take you where you’d rather not”… in the Bible it’s a prefiguration of Peter’s death, but in this world you can’t help think of JP2, athletic and active in 1978, vs. JP2, near-invalid in the 2000’s.
And at the end, when the pallbearers stopped, turned around and seemed to slightly lift the bier facing the crowd, as if to give JP2 one last wave at the crowd, that was just right.
Worst part: “there’s Cardinal Bernard Law”. Gag.
dignatary-spotting: Abdallah and Rania of Jordan. Flag-spotting, one Puerto Rico (near a couple of Lebanese)
On the coverage: **very ** spotty simul-translation. Expected better of Vat-TV.
I was too distracted by the cute deacon reading the Gospel to focus on its message. :o
WRS