Nouveau venu, qui cherches Rome en Rome

I spent the long weekend waiting in the Vatican. It was my wife's birthday, so we went to Rome and she wanted to see the Pope. So we hung around St. Peter's square getting elbowed by eager septagenarians waiting for Joseph Ratzinger to show at the window...
and when he appeared there were gasps from the throngs, applause as he berated politicians for promoting IVF (in Italian), cheers as he told South Americans how important they were in Spanish, and assorted flag waving has he polyglossed to Slovenes, Poles and his compatriots.
The papal cult, where so many congregate in a massive square to hear such a distant tiny figure surrounded by giant statues who has been invested by a conclave to which they ostensiby belong but in reality could never form part of, reminds me of Beijing and Mao. Indeed I noticed a recent sculpture of John Paul II that strongly resembled the monument to the Long March; wish I'd taken a picture. Of course if the Maoists wanted a cult to imitate they could do a lot worse than one which has survived over two thousand years. But do those who are imitated see any resemblance? Do they perceive this to be the sincerest form of flattery?