To the end, he raged against the dying of the light. ”At a certain point, a few moments before he died, the pope raised his right hand, moving it in an obvious, if only faint, gesture of blessing, as if he were aware of the crowd of the faithful present in the square who at the time were following the saying of the rosary,” said Father Jarek Cielecki, editor of the Vatican news service.
”As soon as the prayer was over, the pope made a very great effort and said the word ‘Amen’. A moment later, he was dead.”
In the minutes that immediately followed news of the pontiff’s death, the sound of pealing bells was interrupted only by crying among more than 60 000 people packing St Peter’s Square in Rome last night. As many recited the rosary, the city was united in its grief at the news of the pope’s death.
An unnatural hush gripped the city. Vast traffic jams spread through the roads leading to and from the Vatican as Romans trying to reach the square edged over the cobbled streets alongside partygoers.
Yet, astonishingly for a city of legendarily impatient drivers, not a single car horn was sounded.
Throughout Saturday night, prayers were relayed to the crowd through loudspeakers placed high up in the brilliantly illuminated, sweeping colonnades that embrace the square. The front of the Catholic world’s most important place of worship also blazed with light.
Many of those in the square were young, some wearing leather jackets, others fashionably dressed in their low-cut jeans and ultra-pointed boots.
Anna Dall’Oglio (19) said: ”This was a moral obligation for me. I felt I had to be here at the end. I was not in agreement with some of the things he said, but I admired him enormously as a person. I loved his readiness to laugh.”
Virgilo Carga, a hospital worker from Riano, near Rome, saw John Paul II as ”a political pope”.
”If it wasn’t for him the fall of the wall at the end of communism would never have happened,” he said.
His wife, Giuseppina Mura, said: ”I felt him to be very near because he was so open, because he talked to the young, especially about peace. He was very young at heart. And I care a lot about peace.”
Meanwhile, in Poland the faithful wept and prayed in grim silence.
”This is a terrible shock, I don’t know what to say. He meant everything to us,” said Maria Drapa, one of several thousand who held a vigil in the Pope’s home town of Wadowice.
In Krakow, where the man born Karol Wojtyla began his steady rise to the Vatican, thousands fell silent and many people fell to their knees and wept.
”I am overwhelmed by pain. I have prayed for two days and thought that a miracle will happen, but it didn’t happen and now we can only weep,” said Teresa Swidnicka, one of the mourners.
The bells tolled on Saturday night at Westminster Cathedral in central London, bringing hundreds of Catholics to pray. Far from the typical noise of the capital on a Saturday night, inside the marble-walled cathedral there was a sepulchral hush, pierced only by the saying of prayers.
Worshippers gathered among the wooden pews, some with eyes that were still raw from weeping. A few clutched rosary beads and studied them pensively.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who heads the church in England and Wales, led the worshippers in a prayer, paying tribute to the pontiff: ”He was a faithful standard bearer on Earth of the mystery of your forgiveness and grace on Earth.”
It was followed by a hymn. Later, other priests recited prayers as the mourners continued to come.
Cathedral staff distributed leaflets entitled ”Prayers upon the death of Pope John Paul II”, bearing a colour illustration of the pope’s face, as soon as the news was confirmed. On the back of the leaflet was a ”Prayer for the new pope”.
Relief
Earlier in the day, many of those who flocked to St Peter’s Square in Rome had expressed relief the pope’s suffering was finally coming to an end.
”We are here praying for him while he is about to set out on his last voyage,” American Cardinal Edmund Szoka, a Vatican official, told the crowd during a service.
Throughout the day, the scene in the square had at times been festive, with children chasing pigeons and families picnicking on pizzas. At other times it turned quiet, when only the trickle of the fountains and the hum of rosary prayers could be heard.
Under a lamp post in the centre of the square some followers had left candles. A bouquet of tiny yellow flowers with a note attached, written in a child’s handwriting, said simply: ”Stay with us, John Paul, don’t leave us.”
A painful reminder of the pope’s imminent demise came when workmen in the square started dismantling an awning on the steps of St Peter’s Basilica. The removal of the canvas traditionally used to shield the Pope from the sun during outdoor masses, was to clear space for the pontiff’s funeral.
But then, Rome, while in a state of shock, has been preparing for the pope’s demise for days, making plans to house the tens of thousands of pilgrims expected to flock to the city over the coming days.
In recent days, portable toilets and ambulances have appeared in ever greater numbers near the Vatican. The pilgrims’ desire to be near the Holy Father was such that some city buses had begun skipping intermediate stops to rush pilgrims straight from Rome’s main train station to St Peter’s Square.
City officials had also lined up fairground pavilions and sports stadiums to house the faithful, and the Italian state railway had started to add additional trains to bring the faithful direct to the holy city. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the groundswell of grief that is rising up in Rome, the commemoration of John Paul II has already begun. In Vatican City, the Vatican post office announced that it would issue a special stamp, which can be used only when a new pope is elected.
The courage Pope John Paul II showed in his final days sparked a sustained outpouring of reverence. His brave battle to continue as spiritual head to more than a billion Catholics drew admiration from supporters and opponents alike.
But it was not until last Thursday night that the full gravity of his condition was acknowledged. The Vatican put out a statement at 10.22pm saying the pontiff had been stricken with a high fever as the result of a urinary-tract infection and was being treated with antibiotics.
More important than the content of the announcement, however, was its timing. The Vatican has never been known to make anything public at such a late hour — a clear indication that the pope’s condition was not just serious but critical. It was a sign, too, that the Vatican was willing to keep the world informed of his progress.
It emerged that the infection had set off a ”septic shock” that sent the pontiff’s body temperature soaring and his blood pressure plunging, and eventually prompted heart failure. Hours later, and even with the help of an artificial respirator, the pope was struggling for breath.
The stabilisation of the pope’s condition in the hours that followed enabled steps to be taken the following day for an orderly succession. A stream of senior prelates was ushered to his apartment.
His callers were precisely those who might be expected to hear a dying pope’s final instructions: Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Vicar-General of Rome charged with making the official announcement of his death; Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, his closest ally, who, as dean of the college of cardinals, will supervise the election of his successor; Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Secretary of State, and his two deputies, and Cardinal Casimir Szoka, the Vatican City governor.
The sixth visitor was the most junior, the least known and the most significant: Paolo Sardi, a Vatican envoy who is also vice-chamberlain, one of two officials responsible for the central administration of the church in the interregnum between popes.
Once Sardi had left, everything appeared to have been made ready for the end. Shortly before 7.30pm on Friday evening, Ruini appeared to indicate that the time had come. At a special mass attended by all of Italy’s leading politicians, he declared that the pope ”already sees and already touches the Lord. He is already united to our only saviour.”
It would be more than a day before the final announcement of his death came.
”A pope is never ill”, or so an old Roman saying has it, ”until he is dead.” Down the centuries, the Curia — the central administration of the Roman Catholic Church — has sprung a good few surprises on the faithful, frequently announcing that pontiffs had gone to meet their maker when no one outside the Vatican’s great walls had any idea they were even ailing.
Back in St Peter’s Square, as the early hours of the morning slipped by, a group of youths began to sing, ”Alleluia, he will rise again.” Others resumed reciting the rosary; a priest raised a Polish flag partly draped with a black cloth. Bells tolled at the Vatican and across Rome as flags of the Vatican, Italy and the European Union were lowered to half-mast.
Giulio la Rosa, a 23-year-old student in Rome, burst into tears.
”I’m not a believer, but I came here because I believe in him as a builder of freedom,” he said. ”He was a marvellous man. Now he’s no longer suffering.”
Mbeki praises pope’s ‘cardinal role’
Pope John Paul II had played a cardinal role in strengthening the moral fibre of all humanity, South African President Thabo Mbeki noted in a message of condolence to the Holy See on the death of the pontiff on Saturday.
Mbeki also expressed the country’s appreciation of the pope’s role in pursuit of global peace, development and cooperation among the world’s nations, including his support for Africa’s development and renewal.
”We express our convictions that even though his leadership role will be sorely missed, the Catholic fraternity and faith will draw strength and inspiration from his teaching and guidance,” said Mbeki.
Extending the deepest sympathies of South Africa and its people to Catholics here and abroad, he acknowledged the cardinal role of the pope in strengthening the moral fibre ”among Catholics, people of all faiths and humanity in general”.
Mbeki and his wife, Zanele, were attending the final performance of world-renowned Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti at Supersport Park in Centurion when news of the pope’s death at 9.37pm became known.
Clad from head to toe in a plastic raincoat, Mbeki sat solemnly alongside his wife in pouring rain, listening to Pavarotti’s voice reverberate around the packed stadium during his Farewell from Africa concert.
Pleading a fever, an obviously distressed Pavarotti called a halt to the concert at about the time of the pope’s death, after earlier dedicating a rendition of Schubert’s Ave Maria to ”peace and the pope, who is dying”. — Sapa, Guardian Unlimited Â