On Wednesday, the lying in state for His Holiness Pope Francis began, with tens of thousands of mourners filing past his open casket in St Peter’s Basilica.
In death before us, Pope Francis is still preaching his last sermon to the faithful; et tu in Arcadia ego. Death is always with us.
When did you last, or ever, see a corpse, never mind an illustrious corpse, a global figure, like Pope Francis? In England at least, it is becoming almost unheard of.
The English don’t do death any longer. Or at least not visibly.
The English Wake, sharing the company of the dead as our Victorian forebearers did, has withered away. The dead mostly now pass unseen and unwatched from hospital bed to crematorium. Almost 25 per cent of all English deaths are now direct cremations – devoid even of the ritual of a funeral.
The dead have allegedly become so distasteful, so obscene to us that legions of TV editors are employed to protect us by pixelating out every intimation of mortality, whilst reporting on war zones filled with dead bodies.
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