The not entirely unexpected announcement that Pope John Paul II has died was made a little over ninety minutes ago. The funeral will now occur sometime within the next nine days (probably next Saturday confirmed moments after posting this as Wednesday – much earlier than usual now expected Thursday finally confirmed as Friday), and then the conclave to elect a new Pope will occur between fifteen and twenty days from now.

I somewhat ashamed to say that I really don’t know enough about the life of this Pope to write anything very meaningful, so I’ll just say that, from what little I know of him, he has been a truly Great Pope, even if I disagreed with what he said a lot of the time. The fact that he’s stuck to his way of thinking to the very end is something that can only be respected. There’s a full obituary over on the Guardian site, written by Peter Hebblethwaite (who died in 1994, apparently).