New agoral gathering as a collective reaction of people in the world to the message of death of Pope John Paul II

Abstract

The paper aims to interpret the collective behaviour of people which occurred simultaneously around the world as a reaction to the death of Pope John Paul II. Such a phenomenon has never been described in psychological literature before and the concept of agoral gathering (Biela, Tobacyk, 1987; Biela 1989; Prężyna, 1996) has been chosen to account for it. However, due to its novel features, the analysed phenomenon necessitated introduction of a new category of agoral gathering, namely mundial agoral gathering. This took place when the death of the charismatic leader strengthened universal values and ideas which were anchored in the structure of symbols stored in the collective memory of local communities around the world. The mundial agoral gathering made evident that mundial-inter-self-transcendence of values, ideas, expectations and goods occurred among participants of the mourning after Pope John Paul II.