But the one-time Trappist monk had an enduring influence on Jobs and the business empire he erected.

Jobs sat in on Palladino's calligraphy class at Portland's Reed College.

And this eventually inspired the elegance for which Apple computers are renowned.

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A wise life guru like Saint Ignatius of Loyola or an avaricious man, who could not have cared less about the poor - like the rich man in Luke's Gospel? Despite being a Buddhist, Steve Jobs became a central figure in Catholic debate.

He has even caused the Society of Jesus to "bicker" over him. Indeed it is mainly the Jesuits who are fighting over him.

On the one hand there is Fr. Antonio Spadaro, director of the Italian Jesuit magazine "Civilta Cattolica" who poured praise on him in his funeral oration, describing the founder of Apple as a "visionary, a genius, a revolutionary," comparing him to Saint Ignatius of Loyola: "His vision of life and death is very similar to that of the Society of Jesus' founder."

On the other hand are the criticisms made by U.S. Jesuits. Their opinion of Jobs is the complete opposite to Fr. Spadaro's. Through their "America" magazine, they contest Jobs' "consumer legacy", pointing out that Jobs' technological gems are assembled in China, in plants that look like "prison camps, where child labour, epidemics and suicides are rife."

Continue reading Vatican Insider's: Jesuits divided over Steve Jobs

Image: Vatican Insider

Lord Sacks said that advertising only made shoppers aware of what they did not own, rather than feeling grateful for what they have.

He insisted that a culture in which people cared solely about themselves and their possessions could not last long, and that only faith and spending time with family could bring true happiness.

The Chief Rabbi's comments are likely to raise eyebrows because he singled out for blame Jobs - the co-founder of Apple who died last month - by likening his iPad tablet computers to the tablets of stone bearing the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses.

Paul Vallely says. "Think different is the Apple slogan. Ironically, there was a pretty undifferentiated consensus in the tributes being paid to him. Eulogies likened him to Edison and Einstein. He was 'the Leonardo da Vinci' of our time.

"More tellingly, his death was compared with that of Elvis Presley or John Lennon as marking the end of a cultural era. All this tells us more about ourselves than about the untimely-taken Mr Jobs," says Vallely.

No saint, maybe, but a remarkable man as is revealed in a remarkable commencement address he gave at Standford University in 2005, which even PC lovers would enjoy reading. In the speech he tells three stories:

• His first story: "connecting the dots" - Birth to a single mother and adoption
• His second story: "about love and loss" - being dismissed from the company he founded
• His third story: "about death" - his experience of cancer

On the other hand Paul Vallely shines some light into the shadow side. He says, for example, "Capitalism, Marx argues, conceals the human relationships behind commodities. That is why there is not much mention in the Jobs tributes of the dark underbelly of the iPad, which is produced in factories where conditions are so unrelenting that last year 14 young workers killed themselves. Most of them jumped from the roof of the Foxconn factory in Taiwan manufacturing iPads - as well as kit for Dell and Sony".

Source

• New Zealand Herald
• Image: Hark