Talk:List of dignitaries at the state funeral of Pope John Paul II

Untitled
Hi. Given the enormity of the international reaction to the Pope's death, leading to the flocking of world leaders to Rome, I was thinking that this article would be better organized by country, instead of position. A country-based organization will make it far easier for the reader to visualize the delegation (and other people) from each country to attend the Pope's funerals, not to mention that the present organization, besides making it very difficult to make said assessment, presents some problems. For instance, in some countries, the same person is both head of state and head of government, so the present segregation would theoretically force us to double-list some people, which would not be ideal. In a similar problem, one of the co-princes of Andorra is also a religious leader, since he is the Bishop of Urgel. While sorting it by country, we could also take the opportunity to alphabetize the whole thing, because right now this ever-growing list is also ever more difficult to sort out. Regards, Redux 01:46, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I basically copy and pasted this list from the original Funeral of Pope John Paul II because it was taking up too much space that could be devoted to more detailed descriptions of the events. I totally agree with you, Redux.  Readers would be best served if the delegations were detailed by nations instead of individuals.


 * On the issue of the Bishop of Urgel. Yes, he is a religious leader but he is a Roman Catholic religious leader of a diocese in collegiality with the vast hundreds of Roman Catholic bishops, archbishops and cardinals in Rome.  I think the intent of the person that originally sub-headed the sections was to list religious delegations outside of Catholicism.


 * If anyone has time, I would invite anyone to create a list of delegations, enumerated by nations. --Gerald Farinas 13:42, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Organized by continent and then by country. - Seth Ilys 17:41, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Great job on the new subheadings and organization!! --Gerald Farinas 18:00, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

For those who are interested in keeping up this list, here's the AP list of dignitaries. - Seth Ilys 18:01, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Europe
I grouped the European dignitaries by country. (Alphaboi867 18:21, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC))


 * Let's keep the list sorted alphabetically by country, not by the name of the leader. I think that's more sensible and makes it easier to find who the atendees are from a particular locale. -- Seth Ilys 18:39, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

National delegations
First off, nice work reorganizing the article. It's much better now. The issue I'm bringing up now,however, concerns the allocation of seats in the basilica for the Mass of Requiem. First, I do not believe that, apart from the authorities of the Church itself, the only people to have seats in the Basilica will be the members of national delegations. Some people, with some prestige/influence in the Vatican, will be able to be seated inside regardless of their countries' delegation. That was the example I had given about the Brazilian former President, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. He will be inside, yet he's not part of the Brazilian delegation. I will be restoring that example, although I'll integrate it with the U.S. example given, since it appears that some politicians from that country have decided to go and stand outside with the general public, which is an example of another approach to the problem of limited seating inside. I really don't know it this was the case here (and if it wasn't, I apoligize), but since there's a history of that in other articles of Wikipedia, I would like to remind [whoever it might concern] that examples from the US take no precedent over any other examples that might have been listed before. Once I've edited the article, we'll have two sets of examples, one from the US and one from Brazil (which is the one I had written before), which will both be there because they exemplificate two different situations for the seating arrangements. Unless someone has an example from yet a third solution that some personality has chosen to be present at the mass, I'd ask people to have the tact of not replacing/deleting examples for country-centric purposes. Let us apply precedence to determine which "country" has its example listed, and keep it to the necessary only. Regards, Redux 19:05, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Also, in the following paragraph, the anecdote about Lyndon Johnson's absense in Winston Churchill's funeral seems off topic. Suffice to say that Churchill's funerals had attracted a similar interest from world leaders, there's no need to get into who exactly was there and who wasn't, unless we start a specific article for that.  Regards, Redux 19:17, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * AFAIK the official members of a county's delegation are guaranteed seets in the Basilica, while all others must take their chances with the pilgrims and aren't guaranteed seats. Eg the US Congressmembers that are going won't get any special treatment as VIPs. (Alphaboi867 19:33, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC))


 * If you are a member of a national delegation, you are guaranteed one of the five seats that each country is entitled to. If you are not, you can still get a seat inside, provided you have [a lot!] of prestige/influence in order to get an individual invitation.  Anyone interested in that is on his/her own though.  Fernando Henrique Cardoso, according to reports in Brazil, was able to get his seat because he was a personal friend of over 10 years of the late Pope, in addition to having his "connections" in the College of Cardinals.  Other than that, the only option is to stand outside with the crowd (as it will be the case of the US Congressmen).  Regards, Redux 20:06, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Here's another thing: I've noticed that, in the case of the US people that will be attending, it seems that only those who are members of the official delegation were listed. I believe that the Congressmen who will be there should also be listed. Although they won't be inside the basilica, they are still noteworthy people who will be there (even if they are atop a tree outside). Perhaps we could come up with some sort of code or symbol to identify those who are in the delegations (even if it's obvious) and those who aren't. This goes to any other country, of course. Regards, Redux 20:36, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Country names
Oops. Someone reverted my edit so fast I thought it was a system glitch. No countries were named according to their complete, official names. If they were, everybody would be a "Republic", a "Kingdom" or a "Commonwealth". As it was done, all countries were named according to their common, short names. There's no reason why Ireland should be listed as "Republic of Ireland", unless we start renaming all countries, so that we have "Kingdom of the Netherlands", "Commonwealth of Australia" and so on. There's no point in having it named differently because of Northern Ireland. People from the Ulster should be listed under the United Kingdom's entry, either indiscriminately or segregated by political unit, as it was done with Serbia & Montenegro. But we can't have an entry that completely opposes the m.o. that has been adopted for the article, not to mention that we were listing a country that, as it were, was starting with an "R" in the alphabetical place of an "I", and having Ireland listed in the "R" section, given the specifics of this article, is senseless. I should remind people of the 3RR (although I only reverted the second time because I thought it was a system glitch, as my summary shows). Regards, Redux 18:13, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia lists Ireland (the state) at Republic of Ireland while Ireland is the title of the article relating to the island. Usually it's not needed to use a country's full name, but Ireland implies all of Ireland just as Korea implies all Korea, not just South/North Korea. (Alphaboi867 21:25, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC))
 * Yes, I'm aware of the whole situation involving Ireland. But I disagree that saying just "Ireland" causes confusion.  Northern Ireland is not an independent country (unlike the two Koreas), and when I hear just "Ireland" (especially in a context of countries only), I think of Dublin, not Belfast.  Under different circumstances, I would not oppose having the name "Republic of Ireland" on any article, but as I said, here the m.o. adopted was to use only the short name of each country, and as it stands, the entry for Ireland contradicts it &mdash; not to mention the whole alphabetical order thing.  As I said, Northern Ireland could not have an independent entry here, because it's not a country, but rather a part of the UK, and the name "Ireland", as I see it, does not envoke the whole of the island when we are discussing countries as political entities, since Northern Ireland is not a part of the Republic of Ireland.  I can't imagine any confusion between the two by having the "Republic of Ireland" listed as just "Ireland".  And I don't suppose that anyone would think that the entry for Ireland would or should include people representing the UK region of Northern Ireland, who will be listed under the UK entry (maybe even with a political unit segregation, as it was done for Serbia and Montenegro).  Regards, Redux 21:42, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To remain consistent with this policy, I have changed "Taiwan (Republic of China)" to just "Taiwan".--MGS 14:54, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * There appears to have been confusion above: There is no long form name for Ireland - its legal name is simply "Ireland". Check Names of the Irish state or look it up on the CIA world factbook if in doubt. Regards. Redking7 (talk) 19:41, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Religious Leaders
I noticed there were some Buddhist, Hinduist and Muslim religious leaders as well. Does anyone have any indication on who those might have been? Luis rib 23:19, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Not a clue. I don't the Dalai Lama went since the media would have made a huge deal about it. (Alphaboi867 05:23, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC))

Appreciation
Very nice work, and it's gratifying how few red links there are, considering how many people turned up! -- Arwel 00:54, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, that impressed me, too. A very good sign regarding Wikipedia, to say the least. Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy)  05:51, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

New TOC
I have replaced the TOC, as it was taking up 4 screens on a 1280x1024 res screen and that wasn't useful IMHO. I don't see many problems in keeping it up to date as the information will remain static on the whole. Greg Robson 11:46, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

San Marino
Does anybody know why nobody from San Marino went/was sent?
 * According to there was an official delegation of San Marino. Gugganij 23:19, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Bernard Landry (Canada/Quebec)
I'm not sure, but didn't Louise Harel go to the funeral instead of Bernard Landry? --67.68.92.34 00:06, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Layout
Take a look at fr:Personnalités officielles déléguées aux funérailles du pape Jean-Paul II, the French version. Look what they've done with the flags and tables -- it's far more attractive than ours. We need to use tables like they do, with little flags. It's all quite attractive, and the layout here is rather dull. --Zantastik 09:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Example
Here's a start:


 * If someone is willing to spend the time and effort, then go right ahead! Remember the Wikipedia motto, "Be bold!"  --Gerald Farinas 13:58, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I implemented what was prposed but there's still some cleaning up to do. There is still some French that needs cleaning up (stuff I was unable to decipher with my complete lack of French training) and I might have inadvertently changed English spelling of names to French spellings. --Jiang 05:33, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Somebody forgot to include U.S. in the list...
Congratulations to Wikipedia! I would like to just make a comment. The US is not mentionned nor the flag shown in the list of dignitaries at the funeral of Pope John Paul II. They were quite well represented, I think.


 * Yes it is. It's just that for some reason the list is in French and therefore the USA is under E and not U. -- Necrothesp 18:16, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * The dignitaries were seated alphabetically according to the French spelling of the nation's name. I'm guessing this is from the tradition of using French as the diplomatic lingua franca. --Kvasir 04:38, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Completing the list
This list needs some more work to enter all the names that was present. The Vatican list has way more names than what's on here. Unfortunately the Vatican doesn't seem to allow direct external link to a document. Nevertheless, I have just added the URL to the document in English. The document can be retrieved again through searching on the Vatican website. For example, search for the document using a name of a known attendant ex. Paul Martin. --Kvasir 04:44, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * The list is now accessible directly from the external link provided :) . The document is only available in English, Italian and Spanish. Curiously, the French version is not. --Kvasir 21:16, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * For anyone working to complete the list for your countries of interest, please double check against the Vatican list. As far as I know, most countries were limited to 5 seated for the Funeral Mass. The rest not on the list should go on to the "Unofficial Delegate" section at the bottom of the page. I know it's confusing because these people may sometimes be referred to as the "Official Delegate" by their home countries. --Kvasir 11:11, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Taiwan/ROC
Was the delegation of the Republic of China invited by the Holy See as "Republic of China" or "Taiwan"? &mdash; Instantnood 20:53, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
 * According to the list found on the Vatican website, the country is listed as "China" in the English version and "Cina, (Rep. di)" in the Italian version. I haven't been able to find the French version of the document, and I think Vatican only released the document in English, Italian and Spanish. In any case, Taiwan would've been listed under C (Chine) in French alphabetical listing. Political faux-pas in the part of Vatican? Perhaps, but I think for the sake of consistency the list here should reflect the official list provided by the Vatican. --Kvasir 21:14, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Thank you. &mdash; Instantnood 18:24, Apr 24, 2005

(UTC)
 * The Vatican is one of 25 countries that recognize the Republic of China (on Taiwan) as the government of China rather than the People's Republic of China. (Alphaboi867 22:14, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC))

Official delegation in the Philippines
I added the official delegation in the Philippines as reported here --Jojit fb 10:20, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Please double check with the official list provided by the Vatican found in the external link section. The Vatican list gives only 5 names for the Philippines. As I understand most countries were limited to 5 official delegates to be seated in the VIP section for the funeral. Leonida Vera and Hermilando Mandanas were probably part of the official delegation but didn't get seats at the funeral. If so, please move the two individuals to the unofficial delegation at the bottom of the page. This table was only for those who were seated in the VIP section. Thanks. P.S. your news article did not list a Howard Dee as part of the delegation. Maybe there was a substitution. Could you please confirm that? --Kvasir 10:59, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * According to this news article, former ambassador to the Holy See Howard Dee was in the historic Philippine Airlines flight going to the Vatican. But I could not confirm if he was in the VIP section for the funeral.  I could be wrong but I think Leonida Vera was seated there instead because she is the incumbent ambassador to Holy See. --Jojit fb 03:35, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

FLC
What a lice list. Well done, everyone. I would nominate it on WP:FLC, but it needs some references. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:14, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

French Alphabetical Order?
Any particular reason the list is in French alphabetical order? Seeing as he is a Polish pope who died in the Vatican (surrounded by Italy), and this is the English Wikipedia... Just wondering...--[[User:JonMoore|&mdash;Jo nMo ore  20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 29 June 2005 04:39 (UTC)
 * It clearly states in the article: "At the funeral, the dignitaries were seated alphabetically by the French spelling of their countries (this order of listing follows)." I think it makes perfect sense to keep the list in accordance with the actual seating arrangements. It adds a little historical fact that would otherwise not be known. And it is interesting to get from this list where the people were seated as much as it is who they were.

I see the point, but it really only serves to make the list very confusing and difficult to figure out. Otherwise, it's a very well done list. --Tsk070 05:39, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Um, actually, it serves a very valuable purpose, because by seating them alphabetically, it put several countries that normally have rather bad relations adjacent to each other. This was picked up on by several news organizations, and has now passed into the annals of history. Keeping that information in the article is very important. →Raul654 05:42, August 6, 2005 (UTC)
 * Um, actually, this is a list (and nothing more) and the point of a list is that it should be easy to figure out and perfectly logical. Unless you know French and understand that such lists would be in French, it's difficult to figure out. And I'm not saying that that can't be noted in the article. Why not have two lists here: one for the seating order, and one for English alphabetical order? Again, it's well done except for that minor difficulty. --Tsk070 02:09, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

In an effort to push towards Featured list status, I have done some tidying today. I think the table format needs tweaking to make the names and titles line up: I have done "A" and should be grateful for any comments on style, format, etc before tackling the rest of the table.

Do we really need two lists, one in seating order (in French alphabetical order) and one in English alphabetical order? The list is easy to search anyway (control-F). If we do, it may be sensible to have a separate article, say, Dignitaries at the funeral of Pope John Paul II, and then separate lists, say List of dignitaries at the funeral of Pope John Paul II in seating order and List of dignitaries at the funeral of Pope John Paul II in alphabetical order, rather than having two long lists in the same article. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:10, 9 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Can someone please restore the French country names and put the countries back in French alphabetical order the way it was? The list only started being confusing when User:Ta bu shi da yu deleted the French names and move only SOME of the countries around according to the English alphabetical order. It was necessary to show the French names because that was the raison d'être of the arrangement. --Kvasir 20:27, 10 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I didn't realise that had happened: will reorder the countries to their original positions when I fix up the list, as above. Do you have any comments on my proposed table formatting, or on having a duplicate list in English order? -- ALoan (Talk) 20:34, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't think a duplicate list is neccessary. The English-language page available on the official Vatican site regarding the seating order is listed in French alphabetic order as well as listed in the External Reference. --Kvasir 16:03, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I see the Vatican's (English) official list being ordered, see link below. Can you provide a reference? Cshobar 15:15, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

They were not seated strictly according to French alphabetical order. I think there were other factors in play (heads of states before heads of governments before foreign ministers, etc.) and I read somewhere that the date the foreign state established relations with the Holy See was used to determine seniority. I can't seem to find the rules published anywhere, but this photo shows the President of Cameroon (Paul Biya), President of "China" (Chen Shui-bian), First Lady of Brazil (Marisa Letícia), and President of Brazil (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) seated together in the first row, apparently out of alphabetical order, with the rest of their delegations (probably seated further behind) and the President of Bulgaria (Georgi Parvanov) nowhere to be seen.--Jiang 08:14, 13 February 2006 (UTC)


 * It is true that there were a few exceptions to the French alphabetical order. So listing the delegations in strict French alphabetical order in this article is both misleading and inaccurate. Although I respect the original motivation for doing this, it is not only confusing but simply not correct. I propose re-ordering the list or at a minimum, the French country names should be first (with the English names in parentheses) so that order of the list is more obvious. But I find not a very good idea. The other alternative is to list the delegations in their actual order (which would somewhat approximate French ordering.) In my opinion, this is the only viable alternative to listing in English (i.e. the language of this article and this part of the wiki.) Also, the introduction to the lists state that ordering was in French (which is not strictly correct,) so we don't really need to do it in the article itself. Cshobar 15:57, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Not even the Vatican's (English) official list is ordered in English.Cshobar 01:51, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

As further evidence to the confusion of this list, Jacques Chirac is listed twice. Once in the delegation from Andorra and once in the delegation of France. Now is in a sense, this is correct; he is both President of France and Co-Sovereign of Andorra. (Although on th Vatican's official list he not listed in the Andorra delagation.) BUT I highly doubt that he was sitting in two seats at the same time. This is further evidence that this is intended to be am attendance list, not a seating list. So we have two options: reorder the list as persons/delegations actually sat at the event. (Which would approximate but not actually be in strict French alphabetical order.) Or we can order the list in the language of the particular article. (In this case, English.) I will work on constructing a new and accurate list from the Vatican's Cshobar 15:15, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think organising the list per actual SEATING is possible because there is simply not enough information. We only get a snap shot of the seating from a photograph or two here and there. We simply can't verify who sat where unless we had a surveilance camera of some sort. We also can't verify who actually attended. This was more like an invitation list, which i think should be ordered per French spelling like on the Vatican lists (English or otherwise) like we have now. It at least has some influence on where the people were seating. The sentence in the intro needs to be reworded to reflect this. --Kvasir 19:14, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Can someone please point me to this English Vatican list that is ordered by the French names? It has been referred to several times, and yet no link. Here (again) is the Vatican's (English) official list. Ordered in English alphabetical order. The article also mentions that the order of the list is not the order of actual order of the delegations; that seems sufficient to me. The point of an encyclopedia is to present facts clearly, not to obfuscate reality. In a sense, ordering in French, although we know it is wrong and also can not site a source for ordering, is a veiled form of original research which is expressly forbidden by Wiki policy. Cshobar 01:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Libya
According to Image:Pope John Paul II funeral dignitaries.png, Libya is one of the many countries that sent dignitaries to the funeral of Pope John Paul II. However, there is no Libyan delegation in this list. Is the list incomplete or is the image wrong? A ecis  No running, shouting or piddling in the shallow end 19:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Libya is listed at the vatican site --Astrokey 44 13:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Why French spelling?
I'm new on this one so I don't know if it is supposed to be this way. I saw that the list of those attending the funeral of His Holiness are arranged by French spelling. Why is that?

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Nelson Mandela
He definitely wasn't there, he wanted first but than didn't take the journey. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.134.79.39 (talk) 15:40, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

PNCC
Prime Bishop Robert M Nemkovich of the Polish National Catholic Church was also in attendance —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.57.235.150 (talk) 15:37, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Myanmar
I've deleted the Myanmar (dubbed Burma on the article) entry. Removing Myanmar delegates from the list - this is not sourced; it is not included on the Vatican's list per the Vatican website; also Holy See uses "Myanmar", not "Burma" in any event. 86.41.15.41 (talk) 21:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Korea.
Republic of Korea was referred to as simply "Korea" per the Vatican's list on its website. See external Link. I've changed it.86.41.15.41 (talk) 21:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Serbia
For the Serbia entry (then called Serbia and Montenegro) some smarty pants has put in Kosovo delegates....unsourced. I've deleted them. 86.41.15.41 (talk) 22:15, 17 January 2012 (UTC)