One man, standing slightly apart on one side of the crowd, was ostentatiously paying no attention at all to the service. He was wearing a suede jacket and a flowery print shirt opened at the neck to display the thick gold chain which nestled in the lush hairs on his chest. His big arms were crossed, the sleeve of the jacket riding up to reveal the gold Rolex Oyster watch on his left wrist, and his large, round, slightly concave face was tilted upwards like a satellite dish tracking some celestial object invisible to the naked eye, high above, in the vast dark recess of the unlighted cupola. Not far away, at the base of one of the massive whorled columns supporting the fantastic canopy of the bronze baldacchino over the papal altar, a woman was also absorbed by the spectacle above. With her grey tweed coat, black tailored wool jacket, calf-length velvet skirt and the white silk scarf over her head, she looked like a designer version of the aged crones who constituted the majority of the congregation. But her lipstick, a blare of brilliant red only partially qualified by her cold blue eyes, sent a very different message.

The homily which followed the reading sounded less like a learned discourse than a spontaneous outburst of sour grapes on the part of the priest, nettled by the poor turn-out. Once upon a time, he complained, the church had been the centre of the community, a privileged place where the people gathered to experience the presence of God. Now what did we see? The shops, discotheques, night clubs, beer bars and fast food outlets were all turning people away, while the churches had never been so empty. The touristic passing trade had by this time largely dispersed, but this line of argument appeared to risk alienating even the core of the congregation, reminding them painfully of their status as a marginalized and anachronistic minority, representatives of an outmoded way of thinking. Coughing, shuffling and inattention became endemic.