One sainthood is prompted by the rapidity with which news, speculation, criticism and opinion can be communicated across the globe. A billion worshippers demanding a quick saintly fix is now a difficult noise for the Pope to ignore, especially this Pope who understands so many languages. But so, too, is there pressure for suddenness and unprecedentness because of a momentous quirk in our calendar. An accident of time charges the mundane with historic resonance. It would be no surprise if, three years from now, there was a rush to buy Fish and Millennium Chips, see the Millennium U2, or hunt Millennium Foxes.
History is normally a sequence of events running across time.
The cult of the Millennium, the urge to be doing something when the clock strikes, turns time itself into an historic event. Where and Who slip in significance, as attention focuses on When. But as time becomes the target of celebration, like anything with which we come into contact, it suffers as the victim of over-indulgence. It takes 1,000 years to evolve a monarchy, now we talk of it being no more than a decade to dismantle it, or at least see it skip a generation in the time it takes someone to make the journey from Balmoral in Scotland to London. Where once it took centuries to build a cathedral, a national library becomes a laughing stock when the shelving is delayed.