For the third week in a row, the world went Catholic, as the media covered little else but the Vatican. What is going on? Why does the media assume we are all interested in religion? Is nothing else going on in the world? Why does the media risk hurting people’s sensitivities by forcing religion down everybody’s throat? Or is it not?

Look. By the beginning of this week, a staggering 6,000 journalists had crowded the world’s smallest country. At 1.3sq-km and a population under 800 -- nobody is a permanent resident – the Vatican is by far smaller than Kibera! That is where live cameras trained on one ancient chimney for 24 hours beginning Monday evening. When those cameras detected white smoke on Tuesday evening, a stampede erupted around the world. In Rome people began pouring, in their tens of thousands, into St. Peter’s square, filling it in a quarter of an hour. Across state capitals, bells tolled as scores of people went historical.

In Nairobi, cell phones began beeping with instant messages; some of them written in the only Latin sentence the world knew this week – "Habemus
papam!" ["We have a Pope!"]. Local TV broadcasts switched instantly to CNN and BBC, which were covering the Roman events live. And for once, patrons at local pubs weren’t watching English football on Supersport. Why else would anyone watch football when for 50 minutes billions of eyes locked on the most famous balcony in history?

It is at this balcony on St. Peter’s Basilica where the 265th pope was about to show his face to the world for the first time. The world went into a sudden hush as, in slow-motion drama, German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger stepped out as Pope Benedict XVI.

At the 9 O’clock prime news, KTN invited a Catholic priest to the studio to explain stuff. The next day, at Newsline, Louis Otieno still hosted a Catholic bishop, Canon Alfred Rotich of the military. Following Otieno’s questions and live call-ins, one call even from a Muslim, Bishop Rotich spent the better part of an hour teaching Catholicism on national television, for free.

The entire world had already been forced into watching live Catholic Mass for three hours uninterrupted when, during the funeral of Pope John Paul II, there was nothing else to watch on television. Wednesday morning, CNN, BBC and Sky News were still broadcasting live Mass, as Pope Benedict XVI celebrated his first Mass with 114 cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, where he’d been made pope the previous day. And there is no doubt that the world will watch more Mass this morning, as the new pope is inaugurated at St. Peter’s Square.

The question to ask is this. Is so much religion on our screens warranted? On the other hand, would the world watch so much Islam, Hinduism, Judaism or Buddhism?

Look at it this way. A TV commentator this week called the 1.1 billion-member Catholic Church the world’s biggest multinational. The Church has also been called the best organised corporation after coca-cola. You bet the world is going to stop to witness the change of guard at the head of such an organisation, even if only in curiosity.

If, say, Islam had a single leader who was perceived to wield so much moral authority in history, chances are that the world would stop to witness his death and subsequent succession. Only, the watching would be much shorter. Because, thankfully, Islam is not so clothed in elaborate ritual and tradition, mystery and symbolism.

But, there is another reason the media so covered religion these past three weeks. It evidently knew how much religion affects the world, whether or not people go to church, the mosque, temple or synagogue.

A lot of life is defined by religion. Here’s a quick check. Grab any reputable newspaper, and you’ll hardly go three pages before running into a religion-related story. Why not, when modern civilisation came riding on the back of religion! Western civilisation, in particular, evolved entirely from Christendom. The children of Western Europe had the other end of their umbilical cord in Catholicism. Across the vast former Soviet Union, in Saudi Arabia and in Israel, there is no demarcation between politics, culture and religion. That is why no journalist is sent to Palestine, for example, without a clue about Judaism and Islam, the two religions at loggerheads there.

It is no wonder, indeed, that the world’s major wars are fought over religion. From Darfur to the West bank, the world’s biggest regional disputes are still stuck in religious mud. And after September 11, the so-called war on terror is perceived to be a war on radical Islam.

These are some of the reasons the world is watching Rome, where a new leader has ascended on the throne of Peter. Never mind that Simon Peter, the man at the root of this entire fuss, is said to have been a first-class coward. The man whose Jewish name, Cephas, means ‘Rock’, has the ugly reputation of running out on his master when the time came to count real men. Yet, that is the man who wound up leading Christ’s Church. And that is what all faith seems to be about – underdogs turned heroes.

After John Paul Superstar, the world appears intent to watch if Pope Benedict XVI, long known by critics as Cardinal No, will indeed be any hero.