As the eulogies for Pope John Paul II poured in from around the world on Sunday and the faithful thronged St. Peter's Square at the heart of the Vatican, the superstar Pope showed he had one last trick up his sleeve for the church's 1 billion adherents. He injected a message into his own requiem mass.
It was a typical gesture, a note said by his aides to have been composed even as he lay on his deathbed last week -- apparently serene and lucid almost to the end -- and entrusted to Archbishop Leonardo Sandri to spring on the mass "with such honor, but also such nostalgia."
What the Pope had wanted to tell them finally was: "It is love which converts hearts and gives peace to all humanity, which today seems so lost and dominated by the power of evil selfishness and fear: Our resurrected Lord gives us his love, which forgives, reconciles and reopens the soul to hope."
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
There was no reason to doubt they were John Paul II's last sentiments. He had said them before and certainly the crowd massed in the great square far beneath the windows of the papal apartments would not quibble. They still gazed up at those windows -- one now shuttered, another flung wide open as if to let the fresh air in, or the Pope's soul out.
Hard to believe that it was only the previous Sunday there that the old man had struggled desperately but unavailingly to offer his Easter blessing, and only last Wednesday that he had made his last public appearance before his long, agonizing, extraordinarily public struggle with death.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's secretary of state, effectively its prime minister, presided at the mass.
"I saw him," he told the crowd. "He died with the serenity of the saints."
Already the legends are being created: His famous last word was said to have been "Amen."
How many mourners were there? Certainly the square was not quite full, but it was a huge crowd. The police estimated 50,000, others 130,000. If one in every six people in the world is a Roman Catholic, those at St. Peter's on Sunday represented a fair cross-section of the faithful.
Many of them -- all those aged below their mid-thirties -- have never consciously known another Pope. They stood, holding their digital cameras and videophones high, taking pictures of their friends, technology unknown the last time there was a papal requiem in 1978.
The flags showed where they had come from: among them, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Poland and the US. The bigwigs of the Italian government and the cardinals who had already arrived in Rome had their seats at the front. Further back were groups of teenagers, Scout groups, little old ladies and elderly gentlemen in their Sunday best, curious tourists in jeans and T-shirts, people pausing while walking their dogs, nuns and priests wiping away tears.
A student called Eminia Palmieri explained: "We were at a party last night when we heard the news. Everyone stopped dancing. We all went home and then decided to come to Rome. It's important to be close to him spiritually, but also physically because he was great."
And the poor and dispossessed were there as well: delegations from equatorial Africa, even a group of domestic servants from Colombia.
"He was very important for us immigrants, because he helped us feel respected and accepted in Europe," said one of them, Nelsi Pereira.
Under foot were little mounds of candlewax left from the long vigil. Gusts of applause swept the square, sending the pigeons soaring, and the choral plain chant singing occasionally competed with the wail of ambulance sirens.
The mood was solemn and largely silent: Large Italian sunglasses hid damp eyes. Some fell to their knees on the cobbles, lost in prayer. But before the end the less devout were slipping away for cigarettes under the lofty Bernini colonnade that rings the square.
Afterwards, the cardinals and politicians and diplomats were ushered into a room in the papal apartments, the Sala Clementine, where the Pope's embalmed body was laid out in state in front of a marble fireplace.
He was dressed in maroon robes, trimmed in white silk. There was a white mitre on his head, which was slightly raised, because it rested on a golden pillow. The hands were crossed, a bishop's staff tucked under one of the arms.
A guttering Easter candle stood at one side of the bier and a crucifix on the other. The corpse was flanked by Swiss Guards in their red, blue and yellow medieval uniforms. Yesterday the body was to be moved into the basilica next door for several days to lie in state.
Outside in the square Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, resplendent in his scarlet robes, was addressing the waiting media: "He looked very much at peace, very much as he had done in the good times. It was very good to see him looking so serene. I liked the image of the candle, very much like his life, flaring strongly for many years and then shining very gently and flickering out. A very touching moment."
His words were drowned out by the sound of scaffolding being erected for the television crews. Down at the far end of the Via della Conciliazione, the road leading from the river Tiber to St. Peter's Square, a large media village is gathering in the shadow of the Castel Sant'Angelo, its satellite dishes glittering in the spring sunshine.
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