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By Bobby Ross Jr. | Religion Unplugged
“The pope is dead!”
Religion writer Kelsey Dallas shouted those words to her husband — or something to that effect — when she awakened to a push notification Monday.
Like fellow Godbeat journalists, she immediately scurried to get her prewritten obituary of Pope Francis published.
“I wrote it in late February at a point in the pope’s hospitalization when the daily updates were quite grave,” said Dallas, who covers religion for the Salt Lake City-based Deseret News. “The text was edited, and photos were attached, so all I had to do Monday morning was write a brief intro.”
When the leader of the world’s estimated 1.4 billion Catholics passes, it’s always banner-headline news.
A non-Catholic, I remember when Pope Paul VI — later canonized a saint by Pope Francis — died on Aug. 6, 1978.
Not long after that, smoke started billowing from the Vatican on all three major networks. Suddenly, the cartoons I enjoyed watching as a kid were replaced with somber-looking dudes with red hats (although I’m not entirely certain my family owned a color TV at the time).
Then Pope John Paul I died after just 33 days in office, and the process started all over again. What a traumatic experience for a 10-year-old boy.
I’m joking … mostly.
But keep in mind, we didn’t have 150 channels back then.
This column appears in the online magazine Religion Unplugged.
Shutterstock photo
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