If you want to get ahead…

Apparently, Karol Wojtyla had a “rumbustious send-off”, the like of which for a pontiff’s obsequies has not been seen since the Middle Ages. At least he wasn’t tipped onto the ground as Ayatollah Khomeini was.

The arrangement of the VIP enclosure for the Requiem Mass was interesting. In the front row were seated an assortment of monarchs, including 75-year-old Londoner Andrew Bertie who is the Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem, then the world’s presidents in alphabetical order of the French names of their countries (why?). Further back, others were seated by date-order of their country’s official recognition of the Vatican, which put Tony and Cherie well to the rear. But their lowly position may have been also because of Tony’s hatlessness. As the Guardian reported:
Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan was in the front row, perhaps partly because he had a fancy hat. Elaborate headgear was important. Without it you were nothing... Queen Sofia of Spain was the winner of the women’s event with a spectacular ceremonial mantilla, the men’s category closely contested by ayatollahs in giant black turbans, Armenian bishops in pointed hoods, central Asian holy men in lambskin caps, Orthodox metropolitans wearing jewelled mitres topped with golden crosses and a bearded prelate in cream robes whose hat looked like a vanilla marshmallow. There were moments when the funeral came perilously close to resembling one of those inter-galactic councils in the Star Wars films…