Thousands of people packed St Peter’s Square on Friday as Pope John Paul II’s health deteriorated. They prayed and gazed up at his third-floor window in a quiet vigil repeated in churches around the world.
The pope suffered cardiovascular collapse during treatment for a urinary tract infection and the Vatican described his condition Friday on as ”very serious”.
Tourists and pilgrims began arriving at St Peter’s late on Thursday as news of the pope’s worsening condition made headlines.
Kept off the square by police, some knelt on the cobblestones to pray while others wrapped blankets around themselves to ward off the night-time chill.
”You see video of him when he became pope, he was so alive, so excited to be here. Now to see him break down is just really sad,” said Tripp McLaughlin, a 20-year-old American student on vacation in Rome. ”It would be a blessing if he passed on.”
In South Africa, Catholics were praying for a peaceful end for the pope.
”People are coming to church to light candles. They are praying for him. They do not want him to suffer,” Father Wilkinson of the Catholic church in Rosebank, Johannesburg, told the Mail & Guardian Online on Friday.
The churches were preparing special masses in case the pope dies, and different South African Catholic media were preparing special editions and broadcasts.
”It was supposed to be my day off but I came in today to write a background story on the achievements of the pope in the church and the world,” said Bhabha Madlala, a journalist at Umafrica in Durban. Umafrica is a Catholic newspaper in isiZulu.
”The pope is a great holy man with a very warm personality,” said Madlala. I think his greatest achievement has been that he has made it acceptable for people with a traditional lifestyle to worship god within their traditions and culture.”
”This is not only meaningful for many African Catholics but for people all over the world. And he is an advocate for world peace. He has also been an advocate for abolishing apartheid.
”I met the pope when I was studying to be a priest. He visited Lesotho in 1988 and when he passed me I stretched my hand and he touched me,” Madlala remembers. ”It took a couple of years for me to realise what it means to be touched by such a special and holy person, and up to today I feel blessed that this has happened.”
At Radio Veritas, a Catholic station that broadcasts through DStv channel 71, listeners were calling in and expressing their worries.
”People are actually crying and they are praying for the pope,” programme organiser Khanya Litabe told the M&G Online. ”We were praying for the pope, and our live mass that was broadcasted at noon was dedicated to this great holy man.”
People were speaking with great respect for the pope but critical voices were also heard.
”We send our severe sympathy to all Catholics who may grieve the illness of his holiness the pope,” said Evert Knoesen, director of the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project.
”We regrettably do not believe that this grief will be shared by most homosexual people or by those who have lost family and friends as a direct result of the Catholic Church’s teaching on the use of condoms in Africa.
”Although we believe that this pope has contributed to liberation and freedom in Eastern Europe, we believe him to be also responsible for the prosecution and oppression of women and sexual minorities around the world.”
Pilgrimage to Rome
Among those making a pilgrimage to the square on Friday morning was Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo di Segni, who said he had come ”to pray here in the piazza as a sign of sharing in the grief of our brothers for their concerns and as a sign of warmth for this pope and for all that he has done”.
The Italian Minister of Agriculture, Giovanni Alemanno, said: ”There’s nothing we can do but pray. We’re all upset.”
”I think at this point they should just let things take their course,” McLaughlin said. ”Being head of the Catholic Church, there is so much that needs to be done.”
Amid tightened security on St. Peter’s Square, police kept crowds of journalists, photographers and cameramen out of the square, while pilgrims and tourists were allowed in.
Swiss guards in colorful uniforms stood by at the Vatican’s open bronze door under a portico off the square, which by tradition is closed upon the death of a pontiff.
In a sign of respect for the pope’s deteriorating health, political parties cancelled a series of rallies originally planned in Rome ahead of regional elections on Sunday and Monday.
The invitation to suspend the rallies came both from Premier Silvio Berlusconi and opposition leader Romano Prodi. Berlusconi also said on Friday he was cancelling all his public commitments for the day. — Sapa-AP