John Roughan: Was it John Paul we loved, or the big story?

Once, very briefly, I was quite close to the Pope. I had been assigned to cover his visit here in 1986 but that meant, for the most part, observing him from the crowd as he circled parks and football stadiums, standing in the back of a vehicle designed to display him behind glass.

He came out only to preside at open-air masses where he would deliver hard homilies on sin and salvation. Reporters looking for something real to write about were given briefings by church officials and sometimes by a daring bishop, who would attempt carefully to connect the Pope's preaching to topics of the moment and the moral dilemmas of life.

But once, as I was standing at the entrance to Christchurch's magnificent Catholic Cathedral, he passed within a few metres and I remember I felt something like a force field. I don't want to make too much of it; I'm not religious in that way. But the little man had a powerful presence.

Many of the tributes this week from those who had met him referred to his "charisma", and I suppose that is the word for it. They also described it as "love", which is not a quality I would have readily applied to this Pope. But checking back on my reports of that day, I discover I did.

It was the final day of the visit. Wrapping it up, I wrote: "For at least two or three of those who reported the tour, watching him, listening sceptically to his words and never getting a chance to speak to him, they were moved, nevertheless, by the tour's end. The Pope radiated immense goodwill. It was something special."

The next day I tried to explain it in the less restrictive format of an editorial. The Pope, I said, transmitted "the quality of love of a very high order. There was nothing soft, romantic or even unduly tolerant in his obvious concern for everyone he encountered. He gave demanding, paternal care. It seemed a lonely responsibility, but around him there was an undeniable warmth."

Well, you had to be there. Which is why I have been astonished to see the scale of interest in his death. This was not a Pope whose humanity was often evident through the media. Not many of millions of people who descended on Rome this week could have known him as more than a distant, white-robed figure wearing a perpetual expression of grim paternalism and given to unbending moral pronouncements.

By the time the crowds were swelling St Peters Square, of course, the global television networks had been devoting around-the-clock attention to the dying Pope and newspapers were clearing pages for the subject. We're doing this sort of thing increasingly these days and I sometimes wonder: are we reflecting the real level of popular interest or creating it?

When Gulf wars break out or terrorists fly airliners into buildings, or a tsunami strikes, I have no doubt that blanket coverage, day after day, reflects the importance of events and the public appetite for news and discussion of it. But there are other times when it seems we simply like a big story. Not just we in the business, but all of us.

The death of Princess Diana was perhaps the founding example of the phenomenon. Diana in life had been a big media star but not nearly as big as she became in death. We can barely remember now that the day of her fatal accident evening news bulletins here underplayed it.

The next day it dominated the news but even then, not to the extent it would do so for weeks thereafter. It was like a fire that, once it took hold, burned on its own heat.

Cynics will say these things are entirely media-created but inside this industry it can feel like you are riding a tiger. You want to ride the thing for all it is worth but you don't want to be still riding it hard when public interest fades. So each day you put your finger to the breeze.

It would be idle, though, to deny that it works two ways. If one story eclipses all else in the news, it can become compelling for that reason alone. Much of the early coverage of the Pope's dying days had the ring of a hopeful media whip-up. If it failed it was probably because the networks didn't really understand what they were reporting and it didn't ring true.

CNN decided the appropriate tone for death is always immense sadness and its presenters were suitably doleful. Repeatedly they told us Catholics were in mourning. In fact, the Pope was an old man who had been painfully ill for a long time and increasingly unable to perform a role that permits no retirement. His death was going to be a blessed release.

And the truth is that not all Catholics regret the passing of this papacy. For some it has been a dark age. Their faith has been sorely tested at times by strictures from the Vatican, particularly over the rights and status of women in the liturgy and the life of the church.

John Paul II not only disappointed them, under him the Vatican used its control of ecclesiastical appointments to try to reassert doctrinal conservatism on all Catholic communities.

Just as Catholics have, for decades now, listened to papal edicts on contraception and ignored them, many have come to put allegiance to their faith and conscience ahead of the Pope and to quietly wait for more congenial leadership.

Karol Wojtyla was an actor before he was a priest and I suspect as Pope he accepted a role he believed was divinely ordained for him. I remember him visiting here as a cardinal and he was interesting enough to command a sit-down interview on television. But as Pope he believed his role was to be an anchor against the moral and religious uncertainties of the age.

And I think the millions who have flocked to his funeral quietly appreciated that. Not many of them will have lived by his rigid adherence to the sanctity of life and human dignity, but they might have been glad he did.

Or was it just that he has been a character in their lives for a long time and they do not want to miss an event? Was it the Pope or was it just a big story? God knows.

* John Roughan is a Herald assistant editor