Pope Francis has made our headlines and TV screens, albeit briefly, with the astonishing scenes from Rio de Janeiro as over three million young people gathered on a beach for the Catholic-led World Youth Day.
The Pope challenged the young people and dancing bishops gathered not to be part-time Christians and to get out there and make disciples; he seems a brilliant, holy man. And then he told Brazil that 'Jesus offers us something bigger than the World Cup!' Wow. I once, unthinkingly, quite gently criticised the Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh in a sermon in Australia; I was lynched at the door by a succession of older ladies pretty much accusing me of blasphemy. So I really like it that His Holiness has the audacity to stand on the Copacabana beach a year before the World Cup opens in the same city and declare that Jesus is bigger than Pele, Kaka, Ronaldo and the entire World Cup machine.
Of course he's quite correct. And what's more World Youth Day itself just about equalled or beat the entire 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa. 64 matches, 31 teams plus England, and a total attendance of 3.18 million. Pope Francis topped that in one day. So given that the BBC invited us to spend hours watching Slovenia v Algeria and Honduras v Chile perhaps a little more coverage of the prayerful, youthful vibrancy of the Roman Catholic church might have been appropriate.
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