Pope

It is amazing what politicians do for some face and airtime.

Tuesday I was watching a recap of the pope's visit to Israel. More precisely to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.

It was a very sad and somber occasion to a place that memorialize the victims of a shameful time in our or at least my lifetime.

I watched it for about ten or fifteen minutes and I was puzzled. At the front there were the pope, the president and the prime minister of Israel and some other high officials.

There was somebody speaking in Hebrew that was very poorly translated to English, I guess for the TV only. After that person a cantor came up who sang in Hebrew. Then, eventually the pope came to the lectern and spoke I think in Italian without any translation to the attendees.

The TV cameras paned over to the faces of the attendees several time and that made me wonder. I was wondering how much those people really wanted to be there. I was sure that they all thought to themselves that they would have liked to be somewhere else and do something more useful with their time.

But this is the price politicians have to pay to be in the limelight.

I love to watch the Midnight Mass from Rome and from Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York. I watch it mainly for the pomp. But I always wonder if the main participants really do believe in what they are doing or they just doing it because it is part of their job.

Maybe I am just a bit too cynical to think this way but I can't help it. Well, actually now I am a lot more cynical than I ever was.