Pope John Paul II, whose towering moral authority left an imprint on almost every corner of the globe, was laid to rest in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday after an open-air funeral mass that was attended by millions and watched, via television, by hundreds of millions more.
In the largest religious gathering the West has witnessed in modern times, the pope’s simple cypress coffin, borne by 12 white-gloved pallbearers, was carried from the basilica and placed on the ground before an altar on the steps of the esplanade in front of St. Peter’s.
An open book of the Gospels was set on the coffin lid, and a soft breeze riffled its pages.
As the Vatican’s Sistine choir sang, a solemn procession of cardinals in scarlet robes and white miters took their places in front the vast basilica. One of them will almost certainly be chosen as the next pope.
“Today we bury his remains in the earth as a seed of immortality. Our hearts are full of sadness, yet at the same time of joyful hope and profound gratitude,” said Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, dean of the College of Cardinals, who officiated.
Ratzinger’s homily was interrupted more than a dozen times by applause as he recounted the remarkable life of Karol Wojtyla, the obscure Polish prelate who 26 years ago became known to the world as Pope John Paul II.
“None of us can ever forget how on that last Easter Sunday of his life, the Holy Father, marked by suffering, came once more to the window of the Apostolic Palace and one last time gave us his blessing, urbi et orbi,” said Ratzinger, a confidant of the late pope. “We can be sure that our beloved pope is standing today at the window of the house of his Father, that he sees us and blesses us.”
The mourners easily numbered in the millions. Kings and presidents came to pay their respects as did the multitudes of the ordinary faithful, many of whom traveled great distances to say farewell to a religious leader who evangelized in 129 countries over the course of 104 trips abroad.
Foreign dignitaries attend
President Bush headed the U.S. delegation that included his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Bill Clinton. French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (the name as published has been corrected in this text) and Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair led the roster of European political leaders.
Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former communist minister, was in attendance, as was Lech Walesa, the shipyard electrician and Solidarity movement leader who teamed up with Pope John Paul II in the 1980s to confound Communist Party authorities in Poland and the former Soviet Union.
Spain’s King Juan Carlos sat in the front row of dignitaries. South African Leader Nelson Mandela and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan were among the other recognizable faces.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe evaded a European Union travel ban–unenforceable in the Vatican–to take his place among the dignitaries.
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Britain’s Prince Charles postponed his wedding to be present.
He had little choice putting off his marriage. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, who was scheduled to preside over a nuptial blessing at Windsor Castle, made clear that his own attendance at the pope’s funeral took precedence over the royal wedding. The prince will marry Camilla Parker Bowles on Saturday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, a delicately calibrated snub. Relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican remain strained, and this was one of the pope’s great personal disappointments.
China stays home
Of the major nations, only China, which has icy relations with the Vatican, failed to send any representative. Beijing canceled plans to send a low-level delegation after Italy issued Taiwanese officials visas to attend the funeral.
The presence of Elio Toaff, the rabbi of Rome, and other Jewish leaders at the papal funeral, was a poignant reminder of the pope’s historic efforts to heal the rift between Christianity and Judaism. It was Toaff who in 1986 welcomed John Paul II to the Synagogue of Rome, the first time a pope had set foot in a synagogue.
Bartholomew I, the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, came to pay tribute, but Aleksy II, head of the Russian Orthodox, stayed home and sent his deputy, Metropolitan Kirill, in his place.
Iran’s president, Mohammad Khatami, himself a cleric, was among the many representatives of the Islamic world.
But mostly it was the ordinary faithful who made this occasion so remarkable. Their ranks swelled St. Peter’s Square and spilled into the cobblestoned streets of surrounding neighborhoods.
Some had slept in public parks or on sidewalks to be present for the funeral. In the days before Friday’s ceremony, many had waited in lines for more than 20 hours to view the pope’s body.
They napped on their sleeping bags and suitcases before the ceremony began and lingered afterward for prayers, songs and other rituals to mourn the man they called “Papa.”
Maria Idziak, 26, of Poznan, Poland, drove 24 hours to attend the mass. “Papa came to us [several] times,” she said. “So once, I can come here and tell him goodbye.”
Rev. Victor Edet, 41, a priest from Akwa Ibom, Nigeria, has been studying in Rome for two months but did not have a chance to see the pope before he died. Being close to him Friday was “wonderful,” he said. “This man has meant so much to the church and so much to the world. He was a great moral force,” Edet said. “At his death, I feel obliged as someone who accepted his teachings and stands for them today.”
Multilingual service
The service included readings and prayers in 10 languages. Flags from Germany, Argentina, Lebanon, Spain, the United States and a dozen other countries fluttered in the breeze while transistor radios played fuzzy translations of the homily in a number of languages.
The red-and-white flag of Poland was ubiquitous in St. Peter’s Square–and almost everywhere else in Rome. The first Polish pope is a towering national hero in his homeland, and the Polish Embassy in Rome estimated that more than a million Poles had made the journey to the funeral.
“The Polish people think he’s the greatest son ever born in Poland,” said Arthur Kowalski, 32, of Warsaw, who flew to Rome Thursday night. “We have to be here.”
Piotr Narbutt, 33, also from Warsaw, said he couldn’t imagine anyone else in Rome.
“It was standard that he would always be there,” he said. “Like sunshine, like skies, our pope is in Rome. Somehow I feel in a few moments I can see him in his library window blessing people.”
He saw Pope John Paul II on his visits to Poland and recalled how every time the pontiff left, the people chanted “Zostan z nami!” or “Stay with us!”
“He will surely stay in our hearts,” Narbutt said.
Italians welcomed pontiff
Officially, the pope is the bishop of Rome, and from the first day of his pontificate, John Paul II made a special effort to reach out to Romans and all other Italians. His affection was instantly reciprocated, and in St. Peter’s on Friday, many Italians carried huge banners that read “Santo Subito”–“Sainthood Immediately.”
“He has been a special pope to us,” said Stefano Bernardini, 22, who drove down from Bologna with a group of friends. “That is why we are here now, after a long journey and after having taken a day off from work.”
For many young people, Pope John Paul II was the only pope they had ever known. They turned out in large numbers for his funeral, as they had on so many other occasions, because of the pope’s obvious affection for them.
“He did so much for us, it was the least I could do,” said Donald Rachello, 22, of Milan. “He was our guide as far as young people are concerned. He had confidence in us and was guiding us. He was the one firm point in our life as the faithful.”
Mary Nolan, 20, a college student from South Bend, Ind., leaned against a pylon and wept after the ceremony ended. “I think I always found identity in him,” she said. “He was always in charge and always right. I didn’t have to worry about that part of my life.”
During the more than 2 1/2-hour funeral mass, hundreds of priests managed to distribute communion wafers to tens of thousands of the faithful, a kind of modern day logistical miracle of the loaves and fishes.
At the end of the mass, leaders of Eastern churches, in a variety of robes and hats, gathered around the coffin and prayed amid clouds of incense.
When the ceremony concluded, the crowd erupted into a boisterous and unprecedented ovation, with thousands chanting his name–Giovanni Paolo in Italian, Jan Pawel in Polish.
Pope’s final ovation
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The pallbearers, an elite corps of Italian laymen known as the pope’s gentlemen, returned the coffin to St. Peter’s Basilica. Just before passing through the great bronze doors of the basilica, they paused and turned around, tilting the coffin up so that the crowd could have one more glimpse.
This time, as the coffin vanished behind the burgundy velvet curtains draped over the entrance of St. Peter’s Basilica, the Polish pilgrims cried out “dziekujemy,” or “We thank you,” waving their hands and blowing kisses as the bells of the great basilica tolled.
In a private ceremony attended by the pope’s closest aides, the coffin was placed inside two more caskets–one of zinc and one of walnut–and then interred in the grotto beneath the basilica’s main floor, where many other popes have been laid to rest. A marble slab will cover his grave.
John Paul II had requested to be buried “in the bare earth” rather than in an above-ground sarcophagus.
Earlier in the day, in another private ceremony inside the basilica, Cardinal Ratzinger and Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the pope’s longtime personal secretary, drew a white silk shroud over the pope’s face. The pope’s body was placed in the cypress coffin and a purse containing several commemorative coins was placed at his feet. The coffin was then sealed.
Despite the huge throng and the large number of dignitaries, Rome handled the papal funeral with characteristic aplomb.
Police were out in force, but they maintained a low profile. Streets in the center of the city were closed to traffic so dignitaries could be shuttled about, and AWACS surveillance aircraft provided by NATO watched the skies for intruders.
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