At a D.C. church many years ago, I remember a conservative luminary saying to me, everyone is equal at the communion rail–at a church that still had one–where you’d see a homeless man and a Supreme Court justice, at the same Mass. Likewise, in death. As elaborate as this all is, there are the remains of this major world figure on the altar outside St. Peter’s, in a relatively simple looking coffin, of the kind any of us will find our earthly remains one day. Death, the great equalizer.