Seeing a distinguished person sitting on the sidewalk is something our of the ordinary.

Here I am in a pulpit, dressed like a Puritan minister - an apparition that would have horrified many of my distinguished forebears and perhaps rededicated some of them to the extirpation of witches.

He never prostituted his great acting talent by appearing in television advertisement.

He was not an especially distinguished pontiff and he didn't reign for very long, yet he is of perennial interest to both academic and popular historians.

So my main purpose here today is to once again thank them for their outstanding work, but more importantly to solicit their ideas in terms of how we move forward.