Pope Takes Final Journey

In a procession both majestic and medieval, 12 white-gloved pallbearers carried the body of Pope John Paul II from the inner chambers of the Vatican across St. Peter’s Square on Monday and laid him at the altar of the basilica where he will be buried Friday.

With slow, deliberate steps, cardinals in scarlet vestments and young priests in white tunics escorted the velvet bier as the pope moved closer to his final resting place, entering the basilica in a cloud of incense amid mournfully recited prayers.

The doors of St. Peter’s church then opened to the public, and tens of thousands of people from all over the world began filing past the body. The pontiff, who died Saturday night, ending history’s third-longest papal reign, will lie in state for public viewing nearly round-the-clock until Friday’s funeral.

The Vatican announced that John Paul would be buried in a marble crypt beneath the basilica, where popes for centuries have been entombed, among them, tradition holds, St. Peter himself.

The transfer of the body and the details of the funeral were the first decisions to emanate from the College of Cardinals, which began meeting Monday to plot the future of the Roman Catholic Church, including, eventually, the selection of John Paul’s successor.

Sixty-five cardinals, a little more than a third of the total body, convened in the Bologna Hall of the Vatican Apostolic Palace. In a session known as a general congregation, they swore an oath of secrecy and then set about moving the church through a period of mourning and transition.

“The 65 cardinals present have taken the most urgent decisions,” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said. The remaining cardinals were to arrive later Monday and today.

With a panoply of solemn rituals unfolding, up to 2 million pilgrims and mourners are expected to flood Rome ahead of Friday’s 10 a.m. service. Official delegations will be led by presidents and kings.

President Bush, the first sitting American president to attend a pope’s funeral, will be among an estimated 200 heads of state and other senior foreign officials.

“It will be a moment without precedent,” Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni told an Italian radio station as authorities girded for the influx, which will present vast logistical and security challenges.

Tens of thousands of people packed St. Peter’s Square on Monday and watched in awe as the pope’s body was carried to the basilica. Some stood on tiptoes, craned their necks and stretched to snap photographs.

Flanked by Swiss Guards in red-plumed helmets, a somber parade of priests and seminarians, monks in brown cassocks and cardinals in scarlet caps escorted the body from the 17th century Clementine Hall, through the frescoed halls and marble staircases of the Apostolic Palace and out the massive bronze door into the sunlit piazza.

To the haunting intonations of Gregorian chants and the recitation of the Litany of Saints, the pallbearers ferried the pope’s bier across the square to the front doors of St. Peter’s Basilica. There, the cortege paused, and the pallbearers turned the platform for a brief moment, as if to allow the pope a final glance over the square and the faithful filling it.

The pope was swathed in a red-velvet chasuble, a vestment he traditionally wore during pre-Easter services commemorating the Passion of Christ. A rosary was threaded through his fingers, and a silver bishop’s staff was tucked under his left arm.

Inside the basilica, Christendom’s largest church, he lay before Bernini’s bronze and gilded baldacchino, a colossal, Baroque high altar erected nearly 400 years ago.

Spanish Cardinal Eduardo Martinez Somalo, the camerlengo, or chamberlain who is in charge of running church affairs during this interregnum, led the procession and the service. Before leaving the Clementine Hall, and again when the pope came to rest in St. Peter’s Basilica, Martinez blessed John Paul with holy water and holy oils from a golden chalice, first at his feet, then at either side. Finally, Martinez sent puffs of ceremonial incense wafting over the corpse.

“May perpetual light shine on him,” Martinez, 78, said. “May he rest in peace.” Concluding the liturgy, Martinez wiped tears from his face. Finally, each of the cardinals and bishops approached the pope and knelt or bowed.

The doors then opened to the public, and those waiting -- Italians, pilgrims, tourists, the faithful, the curious -- poured into the cavernous church and filed, quickly, past the lifeless body of a man who had suffered so publicly but now lay still.

By midnight, more than 100,000 people had paid brief homage, authorities said, and the line stretched more than a mile down the Via della Conciliazione. Some of those in it waited for hours.

“My faith is more strong now,” said Tulio Jaranga, a 42-year-old Peruvian, lingering a moment in the doorway of the basilica. “He showed us through his suffering that no happiness is possible without pain.”

Aiden McGuinness of Limerick, Ireland, slept in the square overnight to be sure of a spot in line.

“For all of how sad it is, I am so glad to be here,” he said. “I wanted to be here out of respect -- that’s why I flew here as soon as I heard. I asked my friends, ‘Do you think I’m mad to come all this way?’ And they said, ‘No, you’ll be glad all your life that you came.’ And I will.”

Behind the public rituals, the princes of the church, as the cardinals are known, have quietly put in motion the business of transition. The general congregation sessions that began Monday will continue regularly until the cardinals enter into the conclave to elect a new pope, about two weeks from now.

Although there are a total of 183 cardinals, only 117 are eligible to vote because they are under the age of 80. All, however, can participate in the meetings leading up to the conclave.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles said the cardinals were handling the “nuts and bolts” of immediate church affairs, “the things that need to be done.” On Monday, the cardinals were to examine any documents that the pope might have prepared for them. Navarro-Valls said that John Paul left no instructions for his burial, squelching speculation that he intended to be laid to rest in his native Poland.

Without instructions, the Vatican reverts to tradition; hence, the decision to inter him under St. Peter’s Basilica. Navarro-Valls said that John Paul would most likely be buried in the tomb that once belonged to Pope John XXIII, who died in 1963. John was moved to the main section of the basilica after his beatification in 2000 so that pilgrims could view his tomb more easily.

Though they acknowledge it only hesitantly, the cardinals use the general congregation meetings and smaller concurrent meetings, often among groups that speak the same languages, to consult on their preferred candidates to succeed John Paul.

“It’s a time for listening,” Mahony told a television interviewer.

For all his accomplishments in promoting human dignity and reaching out to Jews and parts of the world that had never seen a pope, John Paul’s rigid adherence to conservative church doctrine left behind a polarized flock. One challenge facing the cardinals will be how, and whether, to change that.

Cardinal George Pell of Australia said he was in favor of selecting a new pope who would continue traditional teachings that he said provided clarity to believers.

“Those who wanted change realized that as long as he had control, they had no hope,” Pell told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“I hope we’ll have the same sense of security with the next pope.”

But Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky of Berlin said that the new pope should distinguish himself from his predecessor. Sterzinsky has advocated reform that John Paul resisted.

“It cannot be said that the church has reformed, nor is it in a state where it should remain,” he told German radio.

Monday’s ceremony was televised on Vatican TV, including the portions not open to the public -- an extraordinary amount of exposure of the Vatican’s inner reaches, and the legacy of history’s most media-savvy pontiff.

Vatican officials say they expect the crowds at Friday’s funeral will set a record for an event at the Holy See.

Veltroni, Rome’s mayor, said the Italian capital would grind to a halt under the weight of so many people.

The expected dignitaries are as diverse as Bush and his wife, Laura, and Syrian President Bashar Assad. John Paul became the first pope to enter and pray in a mosque during a visit to the Syrian capital, Damascus, in 2001.

Bush said one of the pope’s “great legacies” will be his influence among the young. The president also acknowledged differences with the pope over the war in Iraq.

“He spoke to the poor; he spoke to morality,” Bush said. “And of course, he was a man of peace. And he didn’t like war, and I fully understood that and I appreciated the conversations I had with the Holy Father on the subject.”

Bush, who met with John Paul three times, will travel to Italy on Wednesday and will hold meetings with other world leaders Thursday before attending the funeral, he said.

The White House planned to announce by today which other U.S. leaders would accompany Bush.

Times staff writers Laura King in Vatican City and Peter Wallsten in Washington contributed to this report.