1 million at pope's funeral
2005-04-08 12:06
Vatican City - An estimated one million mourners crammed into and around Saint Peter's Square on Friday for a funeral mass expressing "joyful hope and profound gratitude" for the life of Pope John Paul II.
The pope "sees and blesses us," the officiating priest, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said to loud applause at the end of his homily, delivered over the plain wooden coffin on the windswept esplanade outside St Peter's basilica.
He spoke after the start of a three-hour requiem mass, one of the largest in history, broadcast live to hundreds of millions of television viewers around the world.
The Italian news agency ANSA, citing security sources, said an estimated 300 000 people had gathered on St Peter's Square itself and a further 700 000 in the surrounding streets, watching the mass on huge video screens.
Ceremony full of joy
More than 200 world leaders, including United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and United States President George W Bush, sat on the left-hand side of the esplanade in serried ranks of mourning black.
On the other side, beyond the altar, sat red-robed cardinals, many of whom - those under the age of 80 - will meet in secret conclave on April 18 to start the process of electing the next pope.
Ratzinger said that John Paul II, who died on Saturday aged 84 after years of debilitating illness, had borne "a burden which transcends merely human abilities."
At the start of the ceremony, the pope's coffin was carried by 12 officials from the basilica where it had lain in state since Monday and was placed on a carpet in front of an altar specially erected for the purpose.
Vatican Swiss guards in yellow and purple uniforms and scarlet-plumed helmets stood by as Catholic prelates took their seats, bishops in purple, cardinals in red robes that whipped about in the breeze.
An open red-bound New Testament was placed on top of the coffin, its pages flickering in the wind.
The vast crowd began by applauding the arrival of the casket, but many began weeping while the Sistine Chapel choir sang Gregorian chants.
The funeral was "full of sadness, yet at the same time of joyful hope and profound gratitude," Ratzinger said in his homily.
The multitude stretched away along the Via de Conciliazione, the avenue leading to the River Tiber and to central Rome.
After the mass, the coffin would be placed inside a zinc coffin, then into an oak casket, for burial in the crypt below the church.
Cardinal Eduardo Martinez Somalo, the official known as the cardinal camerlengo who is in temporary charge of the Vatican until a new pope is appointed, covered the pope's face with a white silk cloth and sprinkled his body with holy water before the coffin was closed.
A small bag of coins were placed in the coffin, along with a lead tube containing a document about the life of the pope.
John Paul II will be buried alongside some of his illustrious predecessors, in a tomb marked only by a simple slab.
- AFP