‘From Bush to Khatami’

CATHOLICISM never looked as universal, the original meaning of ‘catholic’, as it did when it paid final homage yesterday to Pope John Paul, one of the giants of the Church’s 2,000-year history.

The ceremonial funeral at St Peter's Basilica was Roman to the core, chanted in the city's ancient Latin language in rituals developed here over centuries.

Now more than ever, though, the Pope's message did go "urbi et orbi" (to the city and the world), both through all the countries and faiths represented at the funeral and the hundreds of millions who watched it on television around the globe.