I've lived my life with two templates of fatherhood. One was the authoritarian figure of Karol Wojtyla who became Pope just as I was outgrowing my youthful enthusiasm for religion. 26 years later when he died I realised that the remote shadow of his influence had always been important to me. But so also had the fragility of my own father's life which ended shortly before the Polish man became pope.  Their deaths were very different. Their influence on me was very different. But both represented some kind of fatherhood for me. Both manifested templates that were rooted deep in my soul. Templates that in some ways shape and govern many aspects of my own life. 

Here's a little meditation on the death of Karol Wojtyla in 2005 which was an extraordinary media event; with television crews from around the world focusing their lenses for days on the window of  a little bedroom in the Vatican  where the Pope's life was ending.

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