The world’s 1,1-billion Roman Catholics were presented with a hardline conservative as their new Pope on Tuesday night when the German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s enforcer of orthodoxy, was elected after one of the briefest conclaves in modern times.
The Roman Catholic Church elected German Cardinal John Ratzinger as its first new pope of the third millennium on Tuesday as bells pealed and thick white smoke billowed out of a Vatican chimney. Ratzinger will be known as Pope Benedict XVI.
The new pope appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica to a huge ovation from the crowd in St Peter’s Square.
Black smoke from the roof of the Sistine Chapel signalled that Roman Catholic Church cardinals were still deadlocked on a choice of successor to Pope John Paul II after two rounds of voting early on Tuesday. An initial emission of black smoke from the chimney was followed 15 minutes later by a second one.
A plume of black smoke floated out of a tall, thin stack erected on the roof of the Sistine Chapel on Monday night, indicating that the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church charged with choosing the next pope had held a first ballot, but failed to agree on a name.
Weeks of feverish speculation and intrigue in Rome will enter their final phase on Monday when 115 cardinals begin to elect a new pope in the most exclusive and secret ballot in the world. With no obvious successor, the bookmaker William Hill on Sunday put Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Bavarian-born enforcer of doctrinal orthodoxy under the old pope, known as God’s rottweiler, in front at 7-2.
A dark-horse candidate for pope, capable of bridging the divide between the Europeans and the Latin American Roman Catholic cardinals, appears to be emerging in the shape of the Patriarch of Portugal, Jose da Cruz Policarpo. A week before the cardinals start voting to elect a pope, the 115 men will pause in their devotions to canvass each others’ opinions on the next pontiff.
The high ranks of the Catholic clergy have looked at the crowds attending the late John Paul II’s funeral and wondered how to harness this energy for a church that, at least in Europe and the United States, has seen a dramatic and continuing decline in attendance and vocations.
The final commendation is meant to be the solemn climax of a Requiem Mass. But as the first cardinals processed towards John Paul II’s coffin to line up four deep on either side and melodiously solicit prayers for his soul, they were greeted with a storm of applause.
A popular clamour for Pope John Paul II to be quickly canonized as a Catholic saint erupted in St. Peter’s Square on Friday toward the end of the funeral mass for the pontiff. The crowd chanted ”santo, santo” over and again, briefly holding up the ceremony, and some people held up large banners demanding the quick canonisation of the late pope.
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.
Presidents, prime ministers and kings joined millions of pilgrims, prelates and other religious leaders crowding St Peter’s Square and Rome in paying a final farewell on Friday to Pope John Paul II at a funeral capping one of the largest religious gatherings in the West in modern times.
The funeral of Pope John Paul II, one of the largest in history, began on Friday on a windswept St Peter’s Square with an open-air requiem Mass attended by world leaders, Roman Catholic cardinals and a multitude of pilgrims. To the tolling of a bell, the pope’s coffin was carried out by 12 black-garbed Vatican officials.
A seething mass of pilgrims pushed their way into St Peter’s Square on Friday, desperate to secure a front-seat position for the funeral on Friday of Pope John Paul II. Police opened the square to the crowds at 7am, leading to a dangerous crush at the entrance before the crowd was shepherded toward metal detectors.
Kings and queens, rabbis and ayatollahs, presidents, holy patriarchs and prime ministers will on Friday gather in pomp to bid farewell to a pauper — a man whose will, published on Thursday, shows he left ”no property of which it is necessary to dispose”. On Thursday, Pope John Paul II’s corpse was still lying in state.
Flocking to St Peter’s Basilica in their tens of thousands, in families, clutches of friends or organised busloads, pilgrims said on Wednesday the crush of crowds and the interminable wait are all part of saying goodbye. About a million pilgrims were massed early on Wednesday in the area around St Peter’s Basilica.
Daniela saw him as a statue, Giulia like her dead grandfather, and Chiara could not believe how such a great man could look so small. At least 100Â 000 mourners continued on Tuesday to queue for hours on end in and around St Peter’s Square, waiting for a fleeting moment to say goodbye to Pope John Paul II.
Pope John Paul II’s funeral will be held on Friday morning, and his remains will be interred in the grotto of St. Peter’s Basilica where popes throughout the ages have been laid to rest, the Vatican said on Monday. Chief spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls made the announcement after the College of Cardinals met for two and a half hours.
A multitude of names, spanning the entire religious and political spectrum, are now being touted as the next pope. But predicting who will become the spiritual head of the Catholic Church is a notoriously difficult exercise. History shows that the church has a tendency to overlook the favourite candidates.
”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 … in the square who were following the saying of the rosary. 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.”
On the death of a pope, his successor is elected by a college of cardinals meeting in conclave in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. The system of election has been changed several times over the 2 000 years of the papacy’s existence, with Pope John Paul II having himself introduced a new set of rules in 1996.
Since the foundation of the Christian religion nearly 2 000 years ago, about 264 popes have presided over the church’s fortunes, from Simon Peter of Galilee to the former Karol Wojtyla of Poland, better known as Pope John Paul II, who died on Saturday evening.
John Paul II revolutionised the papacy with his formidable energy and intellectual abilities but his most lasting memorial was to be achieved in the field of politics: the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. The pope, who died on Saturday aged 84, gave the papacy a higher profile than it had ever had before.
Pope John Paul II, spiritual leader of the world’s 1,1-billion Roman Catholics, died on Saturday at 9.37pm, the Vatican announced. The 84-year-old pontiff died two days after suffering heart failure brought on by two months of acute breathing problems and other infections. Tens of thousands packed St Peter’s Square on Saturday.
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/ 24 February 2005
Pope John Paul II has been hospitalised on Thursday at the Gemelli clinic in Rome suffering a flu relapse, Vatican spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls said. He said the pope suffered a relapse on Wednesday, but was not hospitalised until early on Thursday. ”He has been hospitalised … for specialised treatment and tests,” Navarro-Valls said.
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/ 8 February 2005
As a frail Pope John Paul II marked his seventh day in hospital on Tuesday, with no news yet on his eventual release, comments by the Vatican’s top official brought the question of the 84-year-old’s possible resignation — an old Vatican taboo — into the open.
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/ 9 November 2004
The Vatican restated the Catholic Church’s prohibition of euthanasia on Tuesday, as officials promoted use of painkilling drugs to help dying patients live out their days to a ”natural end”. Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan — the pope’s leading official on health care — was responding to a question about living wills at a news conference.
In his latest blunt assessment of United States society, Pope John Paul II on Friday denounced the acceptance of abortion and of same-sex unions as ”self-centred demands” erroneously depicted as human rights. The Catholic church forbids abortion and considers homosexual activity a sin.
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/ 25 December 2003
Pope John Paul II used the traditional Christmas Eve midnight mass at the Vatican on Wednesday to reiterate a call for world peace, saying ”too much blood” continues to be shed in conflicts around the globe. ”Too much violence and too many conflicts trouble the peaceful coexistence of nations!” the pope said
Pope John Paul II on Thursday sharply criticised Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reform programme as an ”error” which could only create tension and discord.
Vatican cardinals and bishops on Tuesday formally recognised as authentic a miracle attributed to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Vatican sources said, making it a formality that Pope John Paul II will grant her sainthood status.