VATICAN CITY (AFP) — The Roman Catholic Church began yesterday nine days of mourning before electing a new pope, after an emotional funeral for John Paul II attended by one million people and watched by countless others around the world.
Pope John Paul II was laid to rest in Saint Peter’s Basilica on Friday, buried in the crypt close to the spot said to contain the remains of Peter, the apostle chosen by Jesus Christ to establish His church almost 2,000 years ago.
The burial inaugurated a nine-day period of mourning for the Polish-born pontiff, who died April 2 aged 84 after a 26-year reign, the third longest in history.
On April 18, Roman Catholic cardinals are to meet behind closed doors to start the process of electing his successor.
About 300,000 mourners thronged in and around Saint Peter’s Square, where the pope’s body lay in a plain wooden coffin during the mass attended by the political and religious leaders of more than half the world’s nations.
An estimated 700,000 other pilgrims filled surrounding streets to watch the ceremony on giant video screens.
At one point the crowd interrupted the mass with calls for the immediate canonization of the pope.
Banners reading ‘’Santo Subito’’ (sainthood at once) were hoisted amid a sea of redand-white Polish flags, prompting mourners to break into a chant of ‘’Santo, Santo’’ lasting about seven minutes.
During his homily, the officiating priest, Germany’s Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said John Paul II had borne ‘’a burden which transcends merely human abilities.’’
Recalling how the pope had appeared at a window in the Vatican to bless believers on Easter Sunday, six days before his death, when he could no longer speak, the cardinal said:
‘’Our pope never wanted to spare his own life, but gave himself unreservedly for Christ until his last moment ... now we can be sure that our beloved pope is at the window of God’s house, where he sees and blesses us.’’
Ratzinger said the funeral was ‘’full of sadness, yet at the same time of joyful hope and profound gratitude.’’
World leaders, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and US President George W. Bush, sat on the left-hand side of the esplanade in serried ranks of mourning black.
Bush later told reporters on the plane taking him back to Washington that attending the funeral was ‘’one of the highlights of my presidency.’’
He said he had been particularly moved by the final moments of the ceremony, when ‘’the plain-looking casket (was) carried and held up for the seal to be seen and then the sun pouring down.’’
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, the largest Catholic country, was also present, as were French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who broke off campaigning for the May 5 general election to fly to Rome.
On the other side of the altar sat redrobed cardinals. Vatican Swiss guards in yellow and purple uniforms and scarletplumed helmets stood by while Catholic bishops in purple sat beside prelates of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
An open redbound New Testament was placed on top of the coffin, its pages riffling in the wind.
The vast crowd began by applauding the arrival of the casket, but many began weeping while the Sistine Chapel choir sang Gregorian chants.
The mass, celebrated on the windswept square under a cloudy sky, was broadcast live and watched by hundreds of millions of television viewers worldwide.
In the southern Polish city of Krakow, where Karol Wojtyla served as archbishop before being elected pope in 1978, some 800,000 people gathered in a field to follow the funeral broadcast live on giant screens, local police said.
Thousands more gathered at Luneta Park in Manila, capital of the Philippines, Asia’s biggest Roman Catholic nation.
Before the funeral, Cardinal Eduardo Martinez Somalo, an official known as the cardinal camerlengo who is in temporary charge of the Vatican until a new pope is appointed, covered the pope’s face with a white silk cloth and sprinkled his body with holy water before the inner coffin was closed.
A small bag of coins was placed in the cypress-wood coffin, along with a lead tube containing a document about the life of the pope.
The mayor of the southern Polish town of Wadowice said she asked the pope’s private secretary, Stanislaw Dziwisz, to place a silver box containing a handful of earth from his birthplace into the coffin.
‘’We took the soil from 11 different spots in Wadowice which have a special link to Holy Father,’’ mayor Ewa Filipiak told AFP.
The coffin was placed inside a zinc-and-lead-lined oak casket which was buried beneath a simple marble slab in a tomb left vacant by John XXIII.
That pope died in 1963 but was transferred to a Vatican chapel in 2000, when he was beatified, the first step towards sainthood.
The Vatican said the crypt, which is normally open to visitors, would be closed until Monday.
Until they begin to meet next Monday the cardinals are not supposed to campaign, nor strike deals, nor reveal any of their or their fellow cardinals’ musings, on pain of excommunication.
But over the next week the cardinals are to hold a series of daily meetings, and in informal encounters may well begin to reach conclusions about who among them will best be able to lead the church after John Paul II and the immense outpouring of affection that he inspired.
Once the conclave begins on April 18 the cardinal electors are cloistered away, barred from all communication with the outside world, until they choose a successor via a series of ballots in the Sistine Chapel.
No clear favorite as next Pope
BERLIN (Reuters) — No clear front-runner has emerged yet to succeed Pope John Paul as cardinals sound each other out before they meet formally this month to elect the next pontiff, Germany’s top Catholic bishop told a newspaper.
‘’As far as I can see, there are no clear favorites and probably no firmly fixed alliances,’’ Cardinal Karl Lehmann, chairman of the German Catholic bishops’ conference told the Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz in an interview yesterday.
‘’We will have to move towards a consensus through agreements, contacts and talks,’’ he said.
‘’The cardinals have time before the conclave to get to know each other better. We shouldn’t forget that the large number of electors, about half of whom have only been appointed since 2001, makes this especially necessary,’’ he said.
‘’First of all, we need a credible, convinced and convincing successor to Saint Peter who will also be measured against John Paul II,’’ said Lehmann, who will be taking part in the conclave.
‘’But not in the sense of a copy. Skin color, origin and certain other issues that have been mentioned will be of very little importance in this,’’ he said.
Lehmann said the next pope would face political problems in China and Africa as well as the challenge of the erosion of belief in traditional Catholic heartlands such as Spain, Ireland and Latin America.
But he said that structural reforms of the church would not be his main priority.
‘’There should be no false diversion from the enduring center of faith in its meaning for every Christian. The last few days have shown what is important,’’ he said.
‘’Reforms may still be necessary but they are only for setting the framework, they may even be just crutches.’’
Thousands attend mass for Pope in Shanghai
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
SHANGHAI, China — Thousands of Chinese Catholics attended services for Pope John Paul II in Shanghai yesterday, despite the Chinese government’s refusal to forge ties with the Vatican.
"Our Pope loved China and loved the Chinese church," Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian said at a memorial mass at Shanghai’s St.Ignatius Cathedral, the city’s main Catholic Church.
"He hoped the Chinese church would be united and not divided," Jin said, a reference to the split between the state-sanctioned church and unofficial groups that still revere the pope as their leader.
A symbolic funeral bier was laid at the base of the altar, topped with white flowers arranged in the shape of a cross and fronted by a framed photograph of the Pontiff. Scores of clergy from the Shanghai diocese were arrayed in white, purple and gold vestments in the choir of the gothic red brick church, built almost 100 years ago by French Jesuits.
Beijing avoided sending an envoy to John Paul’s funeral in a spat over the Vatican’s relations with China’s rival Taiwan.
Yet, the death of the pope has united China’s Catholics in mourning, at least temporarily fading the differences between official and underground churches and fueling hopes that Beijing might ease its rejection of any ties between believers and Rome.
Communist leaders ordered China’s Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951 as they reasserted Chinese sovereignty, following a century of war and foreign domination.
Churches run by the official China Patriotic Catholic Association claim 4 million followers. Foreign experts say as many as 12 million more worship in unofficial churches.
Jin made no direct reference to the feud between the Vatican and Beijing.
But he said the Pope had long desired to visit China, a wish Beijing blocked him from fulfilling.
"Our Pope hoped to visit China, but for various reasons was unable to," Jin said. "Both we and the Pope regretted this."
The mass, spoken in Chinese and Latin, concluded with three bows toward the alter — the traditional Chinese sign of respect for the dead — as a brass band played funereal music. Many in the pews, largely elderly but with many young people mixed among them, wiped back tears as Jin sprinkled holy water on the Pope’s portrait a final time.
Despite the somber tone, participants afterward said they rejoiced in the memory of a pope whom many felt had a particular affection for the church in China. Some said they had prayed for a papal successor to visit China.
"He influenced the whole world. If only he could have visited China ,we would all have been so happy to see him," said Liang Bing, a Shanghai office worker who said his family’s Catholic roots go back "many, many generations."
Liang said he thought a new pope might be able to visit, but that it would take time.
"There is going to be a long process involved, but I think it’s entirely possible," Liang said.
Retiree Zhang Xiaoming, a third-generation Catholic, said she had been particularly moved by the Pope’s concern for the poor.
"He was truly a great pope. He helped make our church stronger and more unified. As a member of the Chinese church, of course I hope to see a pope visit," Zhang said.
Unlikely gestures from world leaders
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Israel’s president said he shook hands and exchanged words with the presidents of archenemies Syria and Iran.
Britain’s Prince Charles took the outstretched hand of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, an outcast according to European protocol.
In the spirit of peace in which Pope John Paul II lived, his funeral Friday brought unexpected gestures from the remarkable group of world leaders gathered in front of the marble facade of St. Peter’s Basilica.
French President Jacques Chirac, who has had his differences with the United States over the Iraq war, bowed to kiss the hand of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who smiled broadly. U.S. President George W. Bush stood by with hands folded.
In Catholic tradition, a moment comes near the end of a Mass known as the "sign of peace," when congregants are asked to shake hands with one another.
That moment had special meaning at the pope’s funeral.
Dignitaries were seated in alphabetical order, according to the names of their countries in French, the accepted language of diplomacy.
Vatican officials said they were satisfied at the mix of princes and presidents, saying the dignitaries clearly felt comfortable in a nonpolitical atmosphere.
Only two seats separated Iranian-born Israeli President Moshe Katsav from President Mohammad Khatami of Iran, a country Israel accuses of sponsoring terrorism and possibly targeting Israel with nuclear weapons.
The two men, who are roughly the same age and born in towns just 50 kilometers apart, exchanged greetings in Farsi, Katsav told the Israeli media.
However, on returning to Iran, Khatami strongly denied shaking hands and chatting with Katsav, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported yesterday.
"These allegations are false like other allegations made by Israeli media and I have not had any meeting with anyone from the Zionist (Israeli) regime," the agency quoted Khatami as saying.
The Israeli also shook hands twice with Syrian President Bashar Assad, who sat one row behind him during the service. Israel considers Syria the most implacable of its immediate neighbors.
Katsav said the first handshake occurred when he turned to greet the leader of Switzerland. "The Syrian president also stood there. We exchanged smiles and shook hands," Katsav told the Web site of the Maariv daily.
Arab satellite station Al-Arabiya said a member of Assad’s delegation confirmed the handshake, though he denied any political meaning.
Katsav’s spokeswoman, Hagit Cohen, said it was too early to say whether the handshakes would yield diplomatic fruits, but called the exchanges historic. "There is no doubt that this is a precedent, it was a historic moment and unique opportunity," Cohen said.
However, Katsav played it down. "I don’t think this has any diplomatic importance," he told Israel’s Channel Two television.
"We are cultured people and say hello nicely and shake hands, but I don’t think our differences have disappeared."
Katsav, who decided at the last minute to attend the funeral and upgrade Israel’s representation, was also embraced by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The two countries have no diplomatic relations.
Prince Charles and Mugabe were another unlikely pair to exchange a handshake, a move that drew criticism from at least two European Union legislators.
Mugabe sidestepped an EU travel ban — which does not apply to the Vatican — to attend the funeral.
A spokesman for the prince said Charles, who was seated one place away from Mugabe, was "caught by surprise" when the Zimbabwean leaned over to offer his hand, a spokesman for the prince said.
