The Pope’s Obituary

As I remain an obituary geek, here’s an update to an old post of mine.

As I noted in the original post:

Length of Ronald Reagan’s obituary in the Times: 10,757 words;

Length of Richard Nixon’s obituary in the Times: 13,158 words;

Length of Queen Victoria’s obituary in the Times: 16,142 words;

And now we have the obituary of Pope John Paul II.

Length of Pope John Paul II’s obituary in the New York Times: 13,364 words.

I’m pretty sure Richard Nixon had the longest obituary in modern Times history, but this one breaks it by more than 200 words. (Still not as long as Queen Victoria’s, but people were wordier back then.)

5 thoughts on “The Pope’s Obituary

  1. Homer you’d better plan to tune out for the next 30-40 days then. I’m old enough to remember the last time this happened and that was before the internet and cable news. This will eclipse all other stories in the world media until the next pope is elected.

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