At St. Peter’s, Sad News Swells the Multitude

It was the pope’s last gift to Rome: a spontaneous urban event magnificent in its emotion and spectacle.

At the time of Pope John Paul II’s death Saturday at 9:37 p.m., St. Peter’s Square was already crowded with about 60,000 worshipers attending an open-air rosary. After Archbishop Leonardo Sandri made the announcement, the rosary became a ceremony of mourning.

And the streets around the Vatican came alive.

More people appeared, surging over cobblestones and through archways toward the place where the pope finally lay at peace. They flocked into the plaza, an open-air, starkly illuminated amphitheater of stone ringed by 96 statues of saints and martyrs standing vigil atop ancient walls.

There were platoons of nuns in black, packs of teenagers in Saturday night finery, tourists from Poland and Africa and Japan. There were Romans swept up by a wave of sorrow, solidarity and faith, whether long-felt or suddenly resurgent.

Within an hour, the size of the crowd in St. Peter’s had almost doubled. Some went to the edge of the plaza near the papal apartments where John Paul had spent his last days and where lights still burned.

Rick Rosales, a 46-year-old pilgrim from the Philippines, stared up at the windows. He clutched a candle that fluttered in the light breeze, while tears ran down his cheeks.

“I am so sad,” he said. “He suffered so much, especially at the end, and it touched all of our hearts.”

Despite the prayers and songs amplified by a sound system, despite the crush of people, the quiet of the plaza was remarkable.

People talked in whispers. You could hear the sound of matches striking to light candles, the click of cellphone cameras held aloft, the occasional sob.

Even at so enormous a gathering, the overwhelming sense was one of personal loss, of private grief. A middle-aged woman suddenly rested her head on a metal railing and wept. Others clasped their hands in silent prayer.

When the single deep pealing of a bell resonated across the square, a young Italian student named Ilaria placed her hand on her heart and closed her eyes. Over and over, those gathered in the vast expanse of the square said the same thing: Wherever they had been when they heard of the pope’s death, they felt the need to come to this place to pray.

“I loved him, that’s why I am here,” said Salvo Santos, a 67-year-old Sicilian. “He was our pope, he was our father, but he was first and most importantly a man. It was easy to feel that you knew him.”

Many couples and families stood close, holding hands or hugging, as they stared silently toward the basilica. Gianni Albanese, 21, draped an arm around his teary-eyed girlfriend, Paola Tucci.

The two were not dressed for a mournful vigil. They looked the part of hip young Romans on a Saturday night. He wore a black North Face vest and brimmed cap, she sported a diamond stud by her right nostril and multicolored jeans. When they heard the news in a nearby pizzeria, they hurried to St. Peter’s.

“We knew this moment would come, but that does not make it easier,” Albanese said. “It’s true we don’t go to church that much, but this is different. This affects us all. This is history.”

There was a striking number of young Italians in the crowd. The youths tended to mumble a bit when reciting the Hail Marys and Our Fathers in the pope’s honor. Some sounded rusty. Many young Europeans have drifted from the church, their religious activity reduced mainly to the major rituals: baptisms, weddings, funerals.

But the pope, first with his activist vigor and in recent years with his stoic suffering, struck a chord with them and many others.

Even people who considered themselves outsiders said they were deeply moved by the outpouring of emotion around them.

“There is such a powerful feeling here,” said Aiko Kumamoto, a Japanese tourist. “When I look around at all these people, I feel as if I am swimming in a sea of sorrow.”