Faithful Wait Hours for Glimpse

They murmured the quietest of prayers as they made their way up the aisle of the great basilica, the only other sound the soft shuffle of countless feet on polished marble floors.

In an extraordinary spectacle of devotion, tens of thousands of Roman Catholic faithful filed past the crimson-cushioned bier of Pope John Paul II late Monday, after waiting for hours in a hot sunshine that faded into the cool shadows of evening and finally the chill of night.

“What I wanted most was to see him before he died,” said Kuttalam Iyappam, a pilgrim from Madras, India, who had planned his trip before the pope’s death Saturday. “Since I could not, I felt something pulling me like the tide, drawing me close to him to pray.”

Almost from the moment Monday afternoon that the Vatican announced that the pope’s body would go on public view in St. Peter’s Basilica after nightfall, a sea of waiting humanity filled the broad Via della Conciliazione leading from St. Peter’s Square to the Tiber River.

Sandwiched between police barricades, the thick column snaked for more than a mile, with people standing shoulder to shoulder on the time-smoothed cobblestones.

There were scruffy-bearded students, stooped pensioners, nuns in gray habits and fleece warmup jackets, African women in colorful tribal dress, parents pushing strollers.

To pass the hours, people prayed, chatted on cellphones and bonded with strangers, showing off baby pictures and gesticulating in animated conversation before the crush grew too tight and forced people to keep their arms pinned by their sides.

They offered each other bottles of water distributed by emergency personnel watching over the crowd. A few people fainted and were helped away from the crush; others who grew weak leaned on the shoulders of newfound friends for support.

“This is nothing at all to suffer for a chance to see a pope who taught us so much about suffering and how to bear it bravely,” said 64-year-old Roman schoolteacher Gilda Paolilli, whose bad knee began paining her as the wait passed its fifth hour.

Once inside the basilica, some dissolved in silent tears at the sight of the pope’s reclining body dressed in red vestments, a white bishop’s mitre on his head. Under the gaze of two Swiss Guards in striped uniforms and plumed helmets, mourners passed close enough to glimpse John Paul’s pale, drawn face, a staff tucked in the crook of his arm, stolid brown shoes on his feet.

Ushers, mindful of the waiting throngs outside, gently pressed the elbows of those who tried to linger.

Many mourners repaired to incense-scented corners of the 16th century basilica to weep beneath magnificent Renaissance statuary, gaze in contemplation at the pinprick glow of candles or sink to their knees in prayer on the cold floor.

“My tears were flowing so hard,” said Nitz Gutierrez, a civil engineer from the Philippines who received Communion from the pope in 2002 in a special Mass for Filipinos in Rome. “When I saw him, I was completely numb, and my heart was beating in my chest so much that I could barely stand.”

Before the doors were thrown open to the throngs of pilgrims, John Paul’s body was borne into St. Peter’s by white-gloved pallbearers amid clouds of incense and liturgical chants that rang out into the basilica’s soaring heights.

The body will be on public view nearly round-the-clock for three more days before Friday’s tradition-steeped funeral and burial in the stone-lined grottoes below the basilica.

“For me, the funeral is not important,” said Bertin Mutombo, a soft-spoken university student from Congo. “I’ll watch that on television, but this is how I want to say goodbye to him. I will never forget.”

As the mourning week goes on, the crowds descending on St. Peter’s are growing ever larger.

Authorities are expecting 2 million pilgrims to be in Rome by the time the funeral takes place.