The requiem Mass for Pope John Paul II ended on Friday at 12.30pm, drawing lengthy applause from the huge throng of mourners and state leaders massed on St Peter’s Square.
As the coffin was borne aloft and carried back into St Peter’s Basilica for burial, the crowd applauded a second time.
Just before re-entering the basilica, it was held aloft and turned toward the square over which he had presided countless ceremonies in the past during his 26-year pontificate.
Mourners wept and bells tolled as the coffin disappeared into the church a last time for burial in the crypt beneath.
Call for sainthood
Thousands of people, mostly Poles, briefly interrupted the funeral with calls for his immediate canonisation.
A section of the vast throng of mourners assembled on St Peter’s Square held up Polish flags and banners reading ”Santo Subito” (sainthood at once), and broke into a chant of ”Santo, Santo”, lasting about seven minutes.
A reporter on a roof overlooking the square estimated that about 10 000 of the 300 000 people on the square participated in the chanting.
The Polish-born pope, who died on April 2 at the age of 84, created more saints during his 26-year reign than all of his predecessors put together.
Some of the pilgrims told reporters that in their opinion, the pope was already a saint.
Pope’s body ‘lightly embalmed’
Meanwhile, a Rome embalmer said on Friday that Pope John Paul II’s body probably was lightly embalmed before being exposed for public viewing for four days before his funeral and burial.
Massimo Signoracci, whose family embalmed three previous popes but was not involved in John Paul’s preparations, said some kind of treatment had to be done to allow the body to be on display on an open platform inside St Peter’s Basilica.
”For a four-day viewing, injections of formaldehyde and other preserving liquids are necessary,” Signoracci said, cautioning that he could not be certain what had been done without examining the body.
The Vatican has said John Paul’s body was not embalmed, only ”prepared” for viewing by hundreds of thousands of mourners, refusing to elaborate on the procedure used.
Experts who have seen the body reported seeing dark stains under the pope’s chin and on his hands.
”It’s not clear from TV coverage, but I’ve been told that the body is showing the first signs of decay,” Signoracci said.
John Paul died Saturday night, and his remains were put on public view two days later, until Thursday.
Maria Campos Guereta, a 29-year-old banker from Jerez, Spain, was among the last mourners to file past the body on Thursday.
”Truth be told, he looked really haggard,” she said.
Signoracci said his family embalmed the remains of Pope John XXIII in 1963 and Paul VI and John Paul I, who both died in 1978.
Paul VI was only lightly embalmed before his body was placed on public display during a hot Roman summer, and after two days, the skin and fingernails began losing their colour.
John XXIII’s body, by contrast, was in excellent condition when it was exhumed from the cramped grotto under the basilica in 2001 — 38 years after his death — and moved to the main floor following his beatification. — Sapa-AFP, Sapa-AP