Spreading the word: The modest cardinal and his powerful blog

I WOULDN’T want to put the Pope and Pierce Brosnan in the same boat, but whenever I hear the radio ad for that Sky bundle thing, it rings a papal bell for me.

The ad has Pierce working very hard to be an ordinary and humble lad from Meath who somehow got lucky/famous/rich, but who — fair dues to him — really hasn’t changed that much. The comic point of the ad being that nobody’s paying a blind bit of attention to Brosnan’s don’t-mind-me-I’m-really-one-of-you self-deprecation.

Modesty seems to play better if you’re a highly-placed churchman than if you’re a film star. You will remember that when Pope Francis came through as the new pontiff, world media fell over themselves about his humility. He travelled back to his hotel by bus, they told us. Imagine. And paid his bill in the hotel all by himself. The way commentators went on about it, you’d think travelling by bus qualified the traveller for beatification and paying one’s own bill was the ultimate indication of how the new head of the Church was down to earth and authentic and not given to notions about himself. No Pierce Brosnan irony at all.