Rome Seems Ready for the Crush

The air is filled with hymns and gridlock and the staccato rage of taxi drivers.

This city, which has known pilgrims for centuries, is playing host again to the masses: At least 2 million international mourners are converging toward Friday’s funeral for Pope John Paul II. Unfolding maps and following flags, they resemble an ecclesiastical army camped amid the ruins and umbrella pines.

“We are ready for everything from heart attacks to terrorist attacks,” said Cristian Gragnaniello, a doctor staffing a green medical tent near St. Peter’s Square. “President Bush and 200 dignitaries are arriving,” he said, noting that pilgrimages could be targets for suicide bombers. “We are most concerned about crowd panic. The code is red.”

Pilgrims have already arrived by the hundreds of thousands, winding their way toward St. Peter’s Square, a procession of backpacks, sleeping bags, frayed Bibles and cellphones. Throngs are crossing Italy’s northern border and pouring through train stations and airports.

Rome has deployed an extra 6,500 police officers, including 800 motorcycle cops along with sharpshooters and explosives experts. More than 5,000 civil defense volunteers have been called up, and 500 doctors and nurses will work at 15 temporary medical sites.

Commercial air traffic is expected to be reduced by 40% for security reasons and to accommodate as many as 800 planes carrying foreign leaders and their entourages. Officials say 1 million people may come from the pope’s native Poland.

Stadiums and fields are turning into tent cities, and pallets of bottled water and portable toilets are robbing a bit of the city’s Renaissance splendor. Cars have been shunted off the main routes leading to St. Peter’s Square, and only the bravest and most mercurial of taxi drivers will attempt to navigate his Fiat through the multitudes.

“This could be an event such as the world has never seen,” said Guido Bertolaso, the special commissioner charged with handling the city’s logistics during the funeral.

The crowds and the clamor worry Patrizia Cologgi, director of Rome’s civil defense organization, sitting Tuesday amid the static of walkie-talkies and video feeds of traffic patterns from around the city.

From basilicas to museums to piazzas, Rome has 80 “sensitive targets” that each have emergency plans for dealing with terrorist attacks.

“The flow of people will be slow but constant,” she said. “It’s impossible that problems will not arise. We just have to anticipate and act quickly.

“We had five years to prepare for the Catholic Church’s Jubilee celebration during 2000 when millions came,” she added. “But all this is hitting us in one week, and it’s all targeted on St. Peter’s. If something happens it will be a disaster.”

Over the centuries, through the Crusades and the trauma of World War II, Rome has become an ornate living room for pilgrims. They sweat amid the works of Botticelli and Bernini; they eat panini and prosciutto in the shadow of Castel Sant’ Angelo. Romans, for their part, traditionally scoff, sing out a few “mama mias” and wince over their espressos as if Dante had whispered in their ears a passage from the “Inferno.”

But for the funeral of this Polish pope, whom many Romans adopted as their own, the city seems more sympathetic to shouldering the world’s sorrow.

“The psychology of the Roman people is controversial,” said Paolo Gentiloni, the former city councilman for tourism who oversaw planning for the Jubilee and World Youth Day, which attracted about 2 million pilgrims. “On one side is the feeling that we’ve had popes for 2,000 years so this is nothing new. But John Paul was particularly popular, and this cynicism is changing.”

There is, however, the issue of commerce. Pilgrims may buy a rosary or a Mass card, but they are not big spenders.

“They purchase a sandwich and sit on a bench,” said Mario Colaluca, a painter in Piazza Navona, whose watercolors shine in the sun amid Chinese selling scarves, Sri Lankans offering battery-driven Mickey Mouses and Somalis flashing knockoff Pradas. “A pilgrim is not the classic tourist. Painting is considered something extra, so artists like me don’t make a lot of money.”

Across the Tiber, Khocon Munshi was selling Colosseum paperweights and miniature statues of David beside Via della Conciliazione. He had strategically moved rosary cases emblazoned with the pope’s image to the front of his cart. He pulled at his baseball cap and waited, listening to the hum of television trucks and the musical threads of different languages drifting past.

“Pilgrims look but they don’t buy,” said Munshi, a native of Bangladesh. “Everyone is solemn and in pain. The pope was a good man, and they are sad. About 100,000 people walked past me yesterday, and I sold almost nothing.”

Meanwhile, helicopters ferrying agents with binoculars skim the cupolas; the Circo Massimo is a bustle. Coins clink in beggars’ cups and gladiators at the Colosseum shine their breastplates and polish their fake swords. The crowds walk on, toward St. Peter’s, where pilgrims like Rustem Oztemel, a Kurd from northern Iraq, list reasons -- religious, political and personal -- for why they are standing in six-hour lines to view the pope’s body.

“We love the pope,” Oztemel said. “We are here to thank the pope for protecting us from the Turks, who want to crush us.”

Everyone, even this city, feels a sense of debt.

“I’ve slept little, but I feel I owe this to the pope,” said Cologgi, the civil defense chief. “We have to allow the people to pay their last farewells. John Paul went beyond all physical limits. I think the city should do as much for him. He would have expected this from us.”

Beyond her office, the pilgrims meander and an extra layer of grit settles on the statues. But Rome, welcoming and at the same time aloof, endures.

Maria De Cristofaro of The Times’ Rome Bureau contributed to this report.