The final farewell: Kings, presidents and 2m faithful give John Paul raucous send-off: The final farewell
By JOHN HOOPER IN ST PETER’S SQUARE
The Guardian – United Kingdom
Apr 09, 2005
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.
Then banners were unfurled in several places around St Peter’s Square
demanding the late Pope be made a saint forthwith. Then came chants of
“Viva il Papa” and “John Paul, John Paul”.
Not since the Middle Ages has a pontiff been given such a rumbustious
send-off as Karol Wojtyla received yesterday from his fellow-Poles
and other admirers.
Before the service, the Vatican’s master of ceremonies, Monsignor
Piero Marini, the man who choreographed the whole thing, had said
he was aiming for “noble simplicity and beauty”. In the event, the
beauty was more noticeable than the simplicity.
As for the nobility, it was all but swept out of the square by the
raw emotion of a crowd that was mostly young, mostly Slavic, and
mostly exhausted after three days on the road with little sleep. The
funeral service for the third-longest reigning pontiff in more than
2,000 years was a religious occasion of the first order.
Yet, at times, the mood was more like that at a football match –
or a political rally, for this was also a political event in several
respects.
In terms of church politics, it was a chance to laud the orthodoxy and
conservatism John Paul II represented. One of the broadest banners was
held aloft by members of Communion and Liberation, the movement whose
followers include Rocco Buttiglione, whose views on homosexuality as
sin cost him a place in the European commission.
It was also a reaffirmation of Polish nationalism, as witnessed by the
chants of “Polska, Polska” before the Mass. And it was, of course,
the opportunity for a gathering of world leaders such as has rarely
been seen.
In the second row alone you had George Bush, Jacques Chirac and the
Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami. So you can imagine what the front
row was like. That included 75-year-old Londoner Andrew Bertie. They
do things differently in the Vatican.
Mr Bertie is the grand master of the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller
Order of St John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta. So he ranks as
a monarch, even though the only territory the order now controls is
a house in the centre of Rome just by the Prada frocks shop.
Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan was in the front row too, but that may
have been because he had a fancy hat. Elaborate headgear was important
yesterday. Without it, you were nothing, which may be why Tony Blair
was put so far back.
Queen Sofia of Spain was hands down winner of the women’s event with a
spectacular, ceremonial mantilla. But the men’s category was closely
contested by ayatollahs in giant black turbans, Armenian bishops in
pointed hoods, central Asian holy men in lambskin caps and Orthodox
metropolitans wearing jewelled mitres topped with golden crosses.
Two along from the Archbishop of Canterbury was a bearded prelate in
cream robes whose hat looked like a vanilla marshmallow. There were
moments when the funeral came perilously close to resembling one of
those inter-galactic councils in the Star Wars films.
Not that a hat wasn’t useful. The weather before the start was hot
enough to have the giant seagulls that are a feature of central Rome
gliding serenely in warm air currents over the basilica. But it grew
steadily colder.
A wind got up as the cardinals arrived in procession. It whipped their
red chasubles into their faces and over their shoulders. It lifted
off the red cap of one to send it cart-wheeling over the “sagrato”,
the area of consecrated ground outside the door of St Peter’s.
When the coffin, made of slightly orangey cypress wood, was carried out
of the basilica, there was a first, prolonged round of applause. Behind
it, where you would expect to find the deceased’s family, came the
members of the papal household including John Paul’s long-serving
secretary, Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz, and the five Polish nuns who
looked after him to the agonised end. They were virtually the only
women taking part in an almost all-male event – a reminder of just
how little John Paul’s reign advanced the position of women in the
Catholic church.
The 12 bearers laid the coffin on a fine carpet and a copy of the
gospels was placed on top.
With so many heavyweights on display, security was fastidious. At one
point, an unidentified jet was forced to land by an Italian fighter
plane near Rome. It proved no more harmless than a pick-up for the
Macedonian delegation.
The only unpredictable part of the service was Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger’s homily. Such was the pent-up emotion by the time he began
that he must have been uncomfortably aware that this was going to be no
ordinary sermon; that he was more in the position of a soapbox orator
facing a restless – and critical – audience. One word of out place,
you felt, and he could easily have been booed and whistled.
There was a storm of applause at the first mention of John Paul II’s
name. The cardinal deftly closed the distance with his listeners by
referring to the late Pope as “Karol” as he outlined his remarkable
life story. How many other pontiffs have worked in a chemicals
factory? How many others were trained in a clandestine seminary?
But the crowd knew all this stuff by heart, and they gradually fell
silent, waiting for the killer sound bite. They got it.
Cardinal Ratzinger reminded them of the Pope’s quixotic, forlorn
attempt to mouth an Easter blessing from the window of his apartment
just 12 days earlier. Pointing up at the window, he said: “We can
be sure that our beloved Pope is standing today at the window of the
house of the Father; that he sees us and blesses us.”
Even some of his fellow-prelates joined in the applause that
followed. It was a stylish performance that showed that the supposedly
austere German theologian is fully able to play to the crowd when
he chooses.
The applause resumed at the final commendation and again when the
leaders of the eastern Catholic churches had asked for the Pope
to be forgiven his sins. After that, it never really stopped. For
nearly 15 minutes, the crowd clapped their dead hero. At one point,
some of the applause came in that staccato 1-2-3 pattern you hear in
stadiums the world over.
The pall bearers genuflected before lifting the coffin for its last
journey to the crypt of St Peter’s for burial. At the top of the
stairs, they turned and raised the head of the casket so that this
most theatrical of popes could face the crowd for one last time. The
applause grew thunderous.
As the pall bearers turned and vanished into the gloom of the great
basilica, many of those who aspire to Karol Wojtyla’s job must have
been left wondering if they really want to follow him; if they really
want to follow that.
The Pope’s wooden coffin, holding the Book of the Gospels and carved
with an M for Mary, at St Peter’s yesterday Photograph: Filippo
Monteforte/AFP