Basilica Opens For Viewing Of Pope
(CBS/AP) The body of Pope John Paul II was borne solemnly into St. Peter's Basilica where thousands of pilgrims began paying their last respects Monday, four days before he is entombed in a grotto below, where pontiffs through the ages have been laid to rest.
After a prayer service attended by cardinals, prelates and dignitaries, the doors of St. Peter's swung open, and police intervened to control the crush when the public was allowed to enter, an Italian news agency said.
There was no immediate report of serious disorder or injury. People crossed themselves as they filed past. Some took pictures of John Paul in his crimson robe and white bishop's miter. Earlier, applause rose from the tens of thousands of mourners in St. Peter's Square as 12 pallbearers, flanked by Swiss Guards in red-plumed helmets, carried the body on a crimson platform through the Bronze Door into the piazza.
Many more pilgrims were converging on Rome for the funeral, set for Friday by the College of Cardinals, which held two meetings in its first gatherings ahead of a secret vote later this month to elect a successor to John Paul. The funeral is expected to draw up to 2 million people, including heads of state such as President Bush and his wife, Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Prince Charles, who delayed his wedding a day to attend. The procession, to the backdrop of priests chanting the Litany of the Saints, began at the Sala Clementina in the Apostolic Palace, where John Paul had lain in state since Sunday.
Televised by Vatican TV, it moved slowly through the frescoed halls, giving the general public a rare view of the inner sanctums of the Vatican. Before the procession, the camerlengo responsible for running church affairs following the pope's death Saturday, Cardinal Eduardo Martinez Somalo, said prayers and blessed the body with holy water, as chanting echoed off the walls of the ornate Vatican hall.
At least 60 members of the College of Cardinals, the red-capped princes of the church, accompanied the procession, along with bishops and other prelates. Video images of the procession were shown on giant screens in the square and on the main avenue leading to the basilica, where more than 100,000 pilgrims, mourners and tourists solemnly watched.
Emerging through the Bronze Door, the procession moved across St. Peter's Square toward the basilica's central doors to applause, an Italian gesture of respect. The pallbearers paused at the top of the stairs and turned the pope's body to face the crowd briefly before entering. Martinez presided over a prayer service in Latin before the public viewing. At 2 p.m., police estimated the crowd stood at 100,000 waiting to get its last glimpse of John Paul in the basilica designed by Bramante and Michelanglo and dedicated in 1626. It was built on the site where St. Peter, the first pope, is believed to have been buried. "It's extraordinary.
It happens once in a lifetime," said Uwe Kunzmann, a civil engineer from Karlsruhe, Germany. "We want to be in the crowd."
"There's less a sense of mourning here than I think there is a sense of thanksgiving for the service of this man," said CBS News Consultant Father Paul Robichaud. Chief Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said John Paul would "almost surely" be buried in the tomb where Pope John XXIII lay before he was brought up onto the main floor of the basilica. John XXIII, who died in 1963, was moved after his 2000 beatification because so many pilgrims wanted to visit his tomb, and the grotto is in a cramped underground space.
Fonte de pesquisa:
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/home/main100.shtml
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posted by Veneza de Almeida Babicsak @ 5:01 PM
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