There's only one person on earth who can write a letter beginning like this:

As you may recall, in 1986, I created “Prayer For World Peace,” a one-hour live TV broadcast for Pope John Paul II that I also produced and directed. The program was viewed by a billion people worldwide. I had directed Live Aid and Sport Aid for Bob Geldof and that made me cocky enough to present the Vatican with the largest satellite telecast of the time.

And there's only one person I know of who would be the recipient of such a lettter. The letter author is Tony Verna, and the recipient is Joi Ito who has blogged the whole letter. A must-read if you're either into large-scale synchronous media or want to read some timely and fond memories of Pope John Paul II, from a somewhat different perspective.

Verna routinely did stuff that was orders of magnitude bigger than anything anyone else ever thought of.... oh, and at least a decade earlier. Was this 'social TV', or what I like to think of as 'synchronous social software'? You bet it was, and long before anyone had either thought of such terminology or dreamed that it was technically possible! OK, it's not the same mode of operation as the current concept of IM-ing your fellow soap-viewers, but consider the strong social bonding and media-centric vision which were the driving forces behind much of Verna's work, as indicated by this excerpt from his letter:

In addition to the hundred plus cameras I had stationed around the globe, I arranged for the congregations (live on monitors) to greet the Holy Father, before and after reciting the rosary with him.

Whew... unbelievable! Verna had the vision, skill, guts and attitude to pull this off, and it appears from his letter that Pope John Paul II had the good sense, grace, and shared vision to facilitate this spectacular large-scale synchronous social event. Go read the rest [of Verna's letter]...