This was an incredibly brave thing for Polly Toynbee to write and publish in today’s Grauniad (though I’m not sure she’d have seen it in those terms). As usual, I agree with most of what she says, and she makes some very fair points. I realise that the whole point of the way this piece was constructed required it to be published on the day of the Pope’s funeral, but I’m still not sure whether that was a stroke of brilliance or a great insensitivity. I know I wouldn’t have done it.

Altogether though, it is certainly worth reading, and presents the Pope in probably a much more accurate light than most of the fawning obitiuaries that are published when someone in a position such as his dies.