Advertisements during the Pope’s Funeral

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Václav Havel, Washington, April 9, 2005

Yesterday I watched the pope’s [John Paul II] funeral on television. It was a grand and moving spectacle. I knew the pope, and I’d even dare say that we were friends, and perhaps for that very reason I was incapable of experiencing any great sorrow at his death. The thing is, I had a visceral feeling that, with great peace in his soul, he was departing for a place he knew he was going to, a good place. But America is a rather odd country. It’s very religious, and at the same time it allows the broadcast of the pope’s funeral to be interrupted by advertisements, many of which were the direct embodiment of what he had criticized for his entire life. I found it truly hard to understand, and it made me more and more uncomfortable, until I finally switched the television off.

To the Castle and Back, Václav Havel, translated from the Czech by Paul Wilson, 2007, p. 20

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