The Washington Post had been critical of the Pope’s stands on several issues, including population policy, but its obituary editorial nonetheless praised John Paul for his contributions to a more humane and noble conception of the human future. The late pontiff, the Post wrote, “will be seen by most … as a remarkable witness, to use a favorite term—witness to a vision characterized by humaneness, honesty, and integrity throughout his reign and his life.”52 The London Daily Telegraph, for its part, editorialized that John Paul II had “raised the papacy to a political and social influence it had not enjoyed since the Middle Ages.”53 The Wall Street Journal, which for years had published lengthy, serious commentaries on John Paul’s teaching, did not “expect the secularists who dominate our intelligentsia ever to understand how a man rooted in orthodox Christianity could ever reconcile himself with modernity, much less establish himself on the vanguard of world history.” But, as the Journal’s obituary editorial, posted online immediately after the Pope’s death, concluded, “Many years ago, when the same question was put to France’s Cardinal Lustiger by a reporter, he gave the answer. ‘You’re confusing a modern man with an American liberal,’ the cardinal replied. It was a confusion that Pope John Paul II, may he rest in peace, never made.”54a
The man who had embodied much of the trials and triumphs of the second half of the twentieth century had become a reference point for many of the contemporary world’s most hotly contested debates—debates over the nature of freedom, love, and the family; passionate arguments over the moral law and its relationship to civil and criminal law; debates over God’s ways with the world he created and the nature of religious truth. The legacy of John Paul II would continue to be debated in the world’s press in the week following the Pope’s death: the debate was sometimes informed and sometimes ignorant; sometimes clearly sympathetic, and at other times just as clearly hostile. For the moment, however, millions whose lives he had touched decided that they had to come to Rome to say good-bye in person.
SANTO SUBITO!
The Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis [The Funeral Rites of the Roman Pontiff] had been revised by the master of pontifical liturgical ceremonies, Piero Marini, and approved by John Paul II in 2000. It began with a brief ceremony in the Sala Clementina on the evening of April 3, when the Pope’s body was brought from the papal apartment and laid on a bier, while the Cardinal Camerlengo, Eduardo Martínez Somalo, led the rite De recognitione mortis [On the reception of the dead] in the presence of senior churchmen and Italian state officials. Officials of the Roman Curia, friends of the late Pope, and journalists who regularly worked in the Vatican were invited to pay their respects during the next day. Then, at 5 P.M. on April 4, a solemn procession accompanied the body through the Apostolic Palace, into St. Peter’s Square, and from there to the basilica itself, where John Paul II lay in state until the funeral Mass, which the College of Cardinals had decided to celebrate on Friday morning, April 8. Archbishop Marini and the producers of CTV, the Vatican television channel, had artfully arranged cameras throughout the procession route, so that both the vast throng in the square and viewers throughout the world could share in the last earthly journey of the well-traveled John Paul II.
The procession began in the Sala Clementina, where Martínez Somalo, now joined by dozens of cardinals from around the world, chanted an antiphon drawn from Christ’s words to Martha on the death of her brother Lazarus—“I am the resurrection and the life.…” After the Pope’s body was blessed with holy water, the Sediarii lifted the bier to their shoulders and the great procession began. Descending the Scala Nobile and passing through the Sala Ducale and the Sala Regia, the procession was accompanied by the chanting of Psalm 23, Psalm 51, Psalm 63, and Psalm 130, as well as by the three great New Testament canticles, the Benedictus, the Magnificat, and the Nunc dimittis. Then, as the procession descended the Sala Regia and exited the Apostolic Palace through the Portone di Bronzo, the famous “bronze doors,” the Litany of the Saints was intoned, as the Church Militant prayed that the Church Triumphant might comfort those in mourning and receive Karol Wojtyła into their company in heaven.
When the body had been placed on the bier in front of the high altar and Bernini’s great bronze baldachino inside the basilica, the familiar chant “Come to his aid, saints of God” was sung, followed by the reading of a passage from Christ’s high priestly prayer in the Johannine account of the Last Supper. Cardinal Martínez Somalo then invited prayer for the Church throughout the world, before the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and the closing petition: “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. Let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.”
By Tuesday morning, April 5, the area around Vatican City known as the Borgo was completely filled with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and remained that way for three days, while the traditional Novemdiales, the daily Masses for a deceased pope, were celebrated by various senior churchmen. The crowds impressed virtually every observer by their patience, kindness to one another, and good humor as they waited in line for twelve hours or more before having a brief moment of prayer in front of the papal bier. Estimates that as many as three million people came to the city during the week were bruited, thus effectively doubling Rome’s population. They had come for many reasons, of course, but perhaps the two most common motivations were they felt the need to pay a personal tribute of respect to John Paul II, and an equally palpable desire to share with others, and thus perhaps begin to heal, the feeling of emptiness that had descended over many, many people on the Pope’s death. Vatican stamps and coins issued during a papal interregnum bear the Latin inscription SEDE VACANTE [While the See is Vacant]. On this occasion, that vacancy was felt deeply. And for many, the answer to that sense of vacancy was to seek comfort and courage in community. Yet for all the sense of loss, the prevailing spirit in the Borgo, among the crowds that wound their way through the narrow streets, a crowd that was remarkably managed by the local authorities, seemed to be one of gratitude—gratitude for a life beautifully lived; gratitude that the man who had suffered so long and so nobly was now, as so many believed, where he had always wanted to be—in “the house of the Father.”
Some called it the “first spontaneous World Youth Day,” as a large percentage of the pilgrims flooding Rome seemed to be young people. They were among the many participants in another moving moment, on the night before the funeral Mass. Along the Via della Conciliazione, the broad avenue that runs from St. Peter’s Square to the Tiber, are a mélange of buildings housing bookstores, pharmacies, banks, the Columbus Hotel, the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, and souvenir shops. On the night of April 7, in doorways on either side of the Conciliazione, were priests, wearing the stole of their office, hearing the confessions of those who were going to remain in the street overnight in order to be close to the basilica for the funeral Mass on Friday morning—and who wanted to prepare themselves sacramentally to say a final farewell to John Paul II, who had constantly urged Catholics to return to the practice of sacramental confession.
Somehow, 800,000 people—300,000 in St. Peter’s Square and the Via della Conciliazione, and another half million in the streets of the Borgo—managed to wedge themselves into the areas immediately adjacent to the basilica for the funeral Mass. Millions of others were at different venues in Rome where large-screen televisions had been erected: the Circus Maximus, the Colosseum, the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza Risorgimento, Tor Vergata (where World Youth Day-2000 had concluded), and the three other patriarchal basilicas—St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul Outside the Walls. On the sagrato in front of St. Peter’s were world political leaders, representatives of other Christian communities and other world religions—and several dozen members of Karol Wojtyła’s Środowisko, who had flown in from Kraków the day before, stayed in parks overnight, and were still in their outdoor apparel (which seemed entirely appropriate). The vagaries of alphabetical seating according to the French names of countries put the American pre
sident, George W. Bush, next to the French president, Jacques Chirac, and led to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad being seated near Israeli president Moshe Katzav.55 King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía of Spain were accompanied by their secularist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero; Great Britain was represented by Prince Charles (who had to defer his wedding for a day) and by Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople was in the first row of Christian leaders, while the Patriarchate of Moscow was content to send Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk, its chief ecumenical officer. Teoctist of Romania and forty other Orthodox leaders were present, including Christodoulos of Athens, whom John Paul had finally gotten to agree to pray with him in 2000. Karekin II, Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church, was there to mourn the man his predecessor, Karekin I, had regarded as a spiritual brother—a sentiment reciprocated by John Paul II. In addition to dozens of other Christian leaders, the Roman Jewish community was represented by its chief rabbi, Dr. Riccardo Di Segni, and by Di Segni’s predecessor, Rabbi Elio Toaff, who had become a friend of the late Pope’s in the course of planning John Paul’s historic 1986 visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome.
The body of John Paul II had been transferred to a cypress casket; its closing, out of sight of the crowds and the television cameras, began the funeral rites on the morning of April 8. The senior churchmen present signed the rogito, a legal document summarizing John Paul II’s life and work, while the choir sang “My soul thirsts for God, the living God; when shall I enter and see the face of God?” The rogito was then sealed in a metal tube and put inside the casket, along with a small bag of coins minted during the pontificate. Archbishop Dziwisz and Archbishop Marini placed a white silk cloth, a reminder of the white robe of the newly baptized, over John Paul’s face, and the casket was closed while the choir sang Psalm 42: “Like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul is yearning for you, my God.”
The Sediarii then lifted the casket to their shoulders and carried it through the basilica to the sagrato, where the entire College of Cardinals was assembled to concelebrate the funeral Mass. The casket was laid on a rug spread on the pavement in front of the altar, and Marini placed an open Book of the Gospels on the cypress lid. Throughout the Mass, a gentle breeze riffled its pages.
As dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was principal celebrant of the funeral Mass; the principal concelebrants were the senior cardinals in each “order” of cardinals—Cardinal Angelo Sodano for the cardinal bishops, Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan for the cardinal priests, and Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estévez for the cardinal deacons—as well as the senior Eastern-rite cardinal, the Lebanese Nasrallah Pierre Sfeir.56 Ratzinger’s homily, delivered in Italian, built on the Gospel text of the funeral Mass, from John 21, where the Risen Christ asks Peter three times whether he loves him, and Peter replies, three times, that he does. It was a text that had long shaped John Paul II’s concept of the papacy, as he sought to live the superabundant love—“Do you love me more than the rest of these?”—demanded of the prince of the apostles. Ratzinger applied that question, and the Lord’s subsequent prophecy that Peter would be led where he did not choose to go, in an eloquent summary of the twenty-six and a half years of the papacy of Karol Wojtyła:
In the very first years of his pontificate, still young and full of energy, the Holy Father went to the very ends of the earth, guided by Christ. But afterwards, he increasingly entered into the communion of Christ’s sufferings; increasingly, he understood the truth of the words “Someone else will fasten a belt around you.” And in this very communion with the suffering Lord, tirelessly and with renewed intensity, he proclaimed the Gospel, the mystery of that love which goes to the end.…
After speaking of how the mystery of divine mercy, as revealed in the cross and resurrection, had found its “purest reflection” in Mary, whom Karol Wojtyła had taken into his home and who had shown him how to conform himself to her son, Ratzinger ended his homily with a memorable coda:
None of us can ever forget how, in that last Easter Sunday of his life, the Holy Father, marked by suffering, came once more to the window of the Apostolic Palace and one last time gave his blessing urbi et orbi. We can be sure that our beloved Pope is standing today at the window of the Father’s house, that he sees us and blesses us. Yes, bless us, Holy Father. We entrust your dear soul to the Mother of God, your Mother, who guided you each day and who will guide you now to the glory of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
In the first centuries of the Church, what would later be called the canonization of saints took place by popular acclamation. On March 12, 604, at the funeral of Pope Gregory I, the assembly went one step further, spontaneously chanting “Magnus, Magnus!” [Great, Great!], such that Gregory I was subsequently known as Pope St. Gregory the Great. It hadn’t happened again for 1,401 years—until April 8, 2005, when, after the distribution of holy communion had been completed at John Paul’s funeral Mass, cries of “Il Grande!” [The Great!], “Magnus!,” “Magno!” [Great!], and “Santo Subito!” [A Saint Immediately!] erupted throughout the square and down the Via della Conciliazione, and at such volume that they could be heard atop the Janiculum Hill, overlooking Vatican City. The congregation was declaring its belief that Cardinal Ratzinger had been right, that John Paul II was truly in the Father’s house, and that future generations should recognize him as “John Paul the Great.” The chants went on for several minutes, while Ratzinger waited patiently to begin the Mass’s concluding rites.
After intercessory prayers by the Church of Rome (led by Cardinal Ruini) and the Oriental Churches (led by the Eastern-rite Catholic prelates present), Cardinal Ratzinger blessed the casket with holy water and incensed it once more, while the congregation sang, in Latin, the words of Job: Et in carne mea videbo Deum, Salvatorem meum [And in my flesh I shall see God, my Savior]. At the very end, clergy and congregation together sang the venerable farewell hymn: “May the angels lead you to Paradise, may the martyrs welcome you at your arrival, and may they lead you into holy Jerusalem. May the choirs of angels welcome you, and like Lazarus, who was a poor man on earth, may you enjoy eternal rest in heaven.” The Sediarii then lifted the casket to their shoulders for the procession back into the basilica. As they turned at the top of the steps so that John Paul II in his coffin faced the congregation and Rome for the last time, another round of “Santo Subito!” and “Magnus!” broke out, as did many tears.
Down in the Vatican grottoes, the last of the funeral rites were completed privately. Two red bands were placed around the cypress casket and sealed with wax. The cypress casket was then placed inside a zinc coffin, on the top of which were a cross, John Paul II’s name and dates, and his coat of arms. The zinc casket was then placed inside a walnut casket, after which the zinc casket was soldered shut. The walnut lid, also bearing a cross, the Pope’s name and dates, and his coat of arms, was then affixed with screws, and the triple casket was lowered into a marble-lined grave cut into the grotto floor, where Pope John XXIII had lain before his body was translated to a glass casket in the basilica after his beatification. Cardinal Ratzinger and Archbishop Dziwisz blessed the triple casket with holy water, and a marble slab was lowered on top of the tomb. It would later bear a simple inscription:
Ioannes Paulus PP. II
16-X-1978 * 2-IV-2005
Below the inscription was the Chi-Ro, the ancient Greek symbol of Christ, who had called Karol Wojtyła, Pope John Paul II, to love him “more than the rest of these.”57
AFTERWORDS
The days after the funeral Mass were full of rain, as if Rome were crying for lo straniero [the foreigner], il Polacco [the Pole], who had won the Romans’ hearts as few others of their bishops ever had, and who had become, quite literally, il Papa, a father of both challenge and love. The Pope who had brought the world to Rome during the Great Jubilee of 2000 had brought together for his funeral one of the greatest assemblies of world leaders in
history—and certainly the greatest at a religious service. More than 6,000 journalists described the death and burial of John Paul II in billions of words and images. The funeral itself was seen on television by some two billion people, the largest broadcast audience ever. As NBC News anchor Brian Williams put it, the remarkable farewell from both Church and world was “the human event of a generation.”
As Cardinal Francis Arinze said later, John Paul II had continued to the end of his life the pastoral strategy of accompaniment he had pioneered as a young priest: “He didn’t hide it. He wasn’t embarrassed by being in a wheelchair.… With John Paul II, we knew and understood his situation, at his invitation. He invited us into his suffering. And this made a difference to people. Suppose you were sick and confined to a wheelchair: you now saw the Pope in a wheelchair and you thought, ‘I’m not alone, there is someone with me.’ ”58
Leonardo Sandri, the Pope’s voice in his last weeks, believed that the Via Crucis of John Paul II had further deepened the Pope’s already rich spiritual life: there was “more reliance on God as a way to live his papacy; the losing battle with his body paralleled the victory of God in his own life and the life of the Church.”59
The man who would succeed him as Bishop of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI, told a group of priests three years after John Paul’s death of how touched he had been by the humility and patience with which John Paul II “accepted what was practically the destruction of his body and [his] growing inability to speak,” such that “he who had been a master of words … showed us the profound truth that the Lord redeemed us with his cross, with the passion, as an extreme act of his love.” Thus John Paul had shown that “suffering accepted for love of Christ, for love of God and others, is a redeeming force, a force of love, and no less powerful than the great deeds he accomplished in the first part of the pontificate.”60
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