The cover of last week’s Tablet prompted my own impressions of the papacies of John XXIII and John Paul I. First there was a foot on the accelerator, then a foot on the brake, resulting in a number of innocent passengers being hurled through the windscreen. Perhaps this was the result of too many back-seat drivers. If we have a repeat of this type of start-stop cycle, it seems likely to result in the ejection of yet more unsuspecting passengers. The other contrast is that one canonisation