Apparently, Pope John Paul II is dead.

Not being Catholic, or even a theist, I'm not big on popes, and I disagreed with him on many issues, but like Ronald Reagan, who died almost a year ago, he was one of the great men of the latter half of the twentieth century. He, like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and to an only slightly lesser degree, people such as Lech Walensa and Vaclav Havel, was not willing to merely "contain" a brutal totalitarian empire, but was determined to stand up to it and end it. Along with them, he succeeded, and for that act alone he will go down in history as one of the greatest men to wear the shoes of the fisherman.

It will be difficult for the church to find his like as a replacement.

I think Drudge has jumped the gun on this one. Reports on his death are a bit exaggerated.

I almost never read Drudge. I got it from Fox News and Reuters, though they seem to be walking it back now, because the Vatican won't confirm.

It's hard to believe much of anything on a day like today, really... With news that big, it's pretty easy to take a hold of it and run with an AFJ...

I was only a lad then, but I seem to recall it seeming like they had a "pope of the week" thing going on for a while there before this one. Much like the "General Secretary of the week" before Gorbachev.

Not quite as bad- Pope Paul lasted 15 years, and it was only John Paul I died very shortly after taking office.

The "GenSec of the week" phenomenon is kind of interesting, if only because it makes you realize how the Soviet Union was really only the creation of one or two generations. As far as I know, the reason GenSecs kept dying in office was that the remaining old Communists on the Politburo knew that the "younger" generation wanted reform, so they were essentially trying to nominate anyone left from their generation. Unfortunately, they ran out of people...