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San Pedro, lunes, 4 de abril: Los cardenales en procesión de la Sala Clementina. The screen shows the cardinals beginning to proceed from the Sala Clementina (Hall of Clement). Cardinal Ratzinger is centre screen. Auf der Leinwand sieht man, wie die Kardinäle aus der Sala Clementina ziehen; in der Mitte Kardinal Ratzinger |
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La guardia suiza recibe al Papa The Swiss Guard receiving the Pope at the entrance to the church over Peter's tomb. Die Schweizergarde empfängt ihren Papst |
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Los fieles esperan la llegada de la procesión Faithful wait for the procession to emerge from the Bronze Door. Tausende warten auf dem Petersplatz, dass die Prozession aus dem Bronzetor heraustritt |
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Adios, querido Santo Padre The bearers turn him for us to see. We cannot bear to truly say goodbye. Alle können den Papst noch einmal sehen. Heißt es nun wirklich Abschied nehmen? |
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Palabra de Dios The word of God Wort Gottes |
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Los Cardenales veneran su hermano Obispo y Padre espiritual Cardinals begin to venerate their brother bishop and spiritual father. Die Kardinäle verehren ihren Bruder im Bischofsamt und geistlichen Vater. Fotos: Donnelly © 2005 |
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ROME, Simon Donnelly. Today, Monday 4 April, Rome really has begun to understand that Karol Wojtyla, the ‘man from a far country’ (as Mary Craig’s 1981 book called him), is dead. Our pope, so much loved, has ‘left us’ (as Italians say, when speaking gently about death). Today was another step in the long, difficult process of saying goodbye.
His body was moved at 5pm this afternoon from the apostolic palace (the Clementine Hall) where he has been lying, and where cardinals and Swiss guards and a few others have been able to pay their respects to him.
Thousands and thousands of us waited in the square to view his last entrance into Saint Peter’s, the church he has presided over for 27 winters and 26 summers. Even though his real church as Bishop of Rome is the Lateran basilica, we identify him most closely with the great funeral church of the apostle Peter, right next to his apartment, as it were.
The communion of saints
Hundreds of volunteer security people were on the square, and in the roads leading up to the piazza. They were even at Piazza Risorgimento, the major intersection north of the piazza, to stop pedestrians who don’t understand Roman traffic from doing silly things. Though the crowd was enormous, the security was kind and good-natured. We need this security, not so much for the pope any more, but for the crowds which can be overwhelmed both by their grief and their enthusiasm.
We watched our pope on the giant digital screens: he is lying down now, never to stand up again in this life, with his small shoes nearest the camera. He looks peaceful, but he looks so vulnerable. In death, we are truly at the mercy of other people.
The liturgy was in Latin, and very beautiful. It started in the pope’s rooms, announcing that the body of John Paul would be moved to the great basilica. It moved on to a long, long litany of the saints, and each time: Ora pro eo "Pray for him" (not pray for us). The litany included the apostles Peter, Paul, Andrew, Simon and the others, the early popes (Linus, Cletus, Clement, and more), and saints and martyrs who have loved the church and suffered for her over so many centuries (Agnes, Lucy and many more). It included Charles (‘Karol’), the name saint of our pope. The litany reminds us that the faith is so old, and yet so vibrant. Then we included the living ‘saints’, the faithful, that all of us would pray for him. The communion of saints extends from the living to the dead, and at the very centre of it today is the man— Karol Wojtyla—who certainly has been a living saint, and who may well one day be proclaimed a saint of the church. (This small liturgy was a theological teaching moment all on its own!).
We wept and cheered at the same time...
Many dozens of servers and acolytes came out of the Sala Clementina, including seminarians of the Capranica College (a pontifical seminary which has had a very close relationship to the person of the pontiff since every seminarian lost his life protecting the pope of the time, Clement VII, during the sack of Rome in 1527). Then came many dozens of cardinals (65 met this morning for the first time; another 50 or so from all over the world are due in the next days). Finally, ten men in black, with white gloves, carried the body of our pope out of the Bronze Door (the one where pilgrims go to pick up their tickets for events at the Vatican), and up the main steps of the basilica.
Every time we saw the body of the Pope on the huge video screens, everyone broke into applause. Some groups of young people again chanted ‘Giovanni Paolo! Giovanni Paolo!’.
In a very poignant gesture, the bearers of his body, held him up for us to all see at the top of the steps. We wept and cheered at the same time. Then he made the last entrance into his beloved basilica, and we watched the rest of the programme on the screens.
Hundreds of thousand are expected to come to see him
There was a reading and a psalm. And then the cardinals and patriarchs could venerate his body. It is moving to see his close companions—Cardinals Ruini, Ratzinger, Sodano, Archbishop Marini, and others who have so closely accompanied him over the years—who are now still accompanying him, only he is dead.
Tonight the faithful can begin to go to venerate him. Hundreds of thousands are expected in the next three days, almost throughout the night. There were many many young Polish voices around me in the crowd today: people are arriving from his homeland to bid their father goodbye. There will also be countless Italians. We will go at 5am on Wednesday.
On a phone-in radio programme this morning, a woman said: ‘I know he was the Pope to the world. But I’m a Roman, and he was my bishop. I loved him as my Bishop. My Bishop has left us.’ This shows the side of the man that many of us in other parts of the Catholic world did not see much of: John Paul strived to be a good bishop to the people of Rome. Not an easy job! But he succeeded, and they love him for that.
As the Vatican website proclaims (referring to Lumen Gentium): ‘The Roman Pontiff, as the successor of Peter, is the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity of both the bishops and of the faithful.’ And this afternoon we had come to see the man who has personified that perpetual and visible principle for so long, as he was carried into the church of the apostle Peter.
The giant letters on the upper walls inside the basilica reaffirm the unity Christ himself bestowed on Peter: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam; et portae inferi non praevalebunt adversum eam. "You are Peter [‘rock’], and on this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell will not stand against it". John Paul has strived to live this unity for the church and for the world.