Such blinkered reverence is at odds with the world in which the Beatles and Bond came to stardom, when the spending power of neophyte teenagers dominated pop culture and a song or movie could be top of the pops or a box office hit one week and gone the next.

CNN: Beatles and Bond: Half a century on, can we now let them be?

At a meeting in March with Pope Francis, he also repeated "unconditional reverence and obedience" to his successor.

BBC: Ex-Pope Benedict returns to Vatican

Serb nationalists have a special reverence for parts of Kosovo, notably the Field of Blackbirds, where their forebears' defeat at the hands of the Ottomans in 1389 cast the Serbs into 500 years of Muslim subjugation.

ECONOMIST: Intervene in Kosovo?