c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Why was it almost impossible for the world to look away from the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI?

The cynic might say that it gave Americans just what they love: power pitted against mortality, in a reality show that was far more suspenseful and consequential than Donald Trump’s hammy firing and hiring on “The Apprentice.”

Visually, it is hard to improve on Monet-like sunsets behind St. Peter’s Basilica, combined with vast crowds that are real rather than digitized. It’s more Michelangelo, less George Lucas.

Even commentators like Chris Matthews who interpreted the papal transition in American political terms could not diminish the aura of mystery that welled out of the ancient pageantry and solemn rites.

Irish bookie Paddy Powers offered odds on candidates as if the Papal Sweepstakes were being run in the Sistine Chapel. And some turned the late,great pope into a kind of ecclesiastical Citizen Kane who, dying in a castlelike setting, did not murmur “Rosebud” but rather “Ratzinger” as his last message to the world.

Don Imus, the radio and television host, may have spoken for us all when he noted that although he is not Catholic or closely associated with organized religion, he had found the event “fascinating,” a word that means “to attract irresistibly.”

We are fascinated because this transition was not about colorfully dressed strangers in a far country, but instead about ourselves in our own clothes in our everyday lives. The event spoke to our deepest levels, telling us again one of the most important of all the great mythical, spiritual and religious stories.

The death of one pope and the election of another became a common experience through the media coverage that _ wanting to get the details of the story right on the surface _ transmitted its powerful depths without knowing it.

We experienced together two great themes: a journey from life to death that we must all make in one way or the other, and the search for a father. Understanding these dynamic mythic roots does not lessen but rather accents the religious significance of the event.

The death of Pope John Paul II re-enacted the great mythic passage from Mother Earth back to the Father that is a central and compelling aspect of the mystery of our existence. We were stirred not only because of our esteem for the late pope, but because the event presented us with our own inescapable human destiny.

The word for pope in Italian is “papa,” a designation with powerful resonance for everybody. The election of Pope Benedict XVI strikes the chord of another common story, the search for the father _ that is, an understanding of where we came from, a journey we all make in life.

This “father quest,” as Joseph Campbell describes it, is a theme in James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses.” The hero, Stephen Dedalus, knows who his earthly father is but must find his spiritual father, the one who gave him his character, “the symbol of that ground or source of his being with which (he) … must put himself in relation.”

The world aches with the mystery of fatherhood. Some, like actress Jane Fonda, lose their fathers and search through a life of unrelieved pain for a relationship with their earthly fathers. Others celebrate it, as Tiger Woods did in winning the Master’s Tournament, by declaring, “That’s for you, Pop.”

We all long for the kind of father that a good pope is, a papa who gives us the spiritual strength and comfort to live out the mystery of our lives.

We did not just watch something as bemused spectators on Vatican history. Something happened to us spiritually, something we did not expect and for which we could not have prepared ourselves.

We may have tuned in to be entertained or informed about a contemporary story. Instead, we were drawn into _ and transformed by _ a story about ourselves and the great human quest for a spiritual father.

(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)

KRE/PH END KENNEDY