Whether Flower Vendors or Faux Gladiators, Romans Carry On

ROME — Flower seller Giuseppe Nicosia listened to the mournful rhythm of funeral incantations on a portable radio, but at the same time kept up an enthusiastic sales pitch for passersby: Where had they ever seen redder roses? Or smelled more fragrant lilies?

Even on a day given over to a massive outpouring of grief, Rome’s eternal vitality seemed somehow undimmed. On the day of Pope John Paul II’s funeral, the morning flower and vegetable market in the Campo de’ Fiori was a riot of scent and color, as always.

“I am remembering the pope,” Nicosia said, “but each of us has a daily life to live.”

All across the ancient city, even those on the fringes of the immense funeral gathering in St. Peter’s Square felt its reverberations, both spiritual and temporal.

While worshipers overflowed the streets surrounding the Vatican, pilgrims of a different sort descended on one of Rome’s most famous coffee bars, Sant’ Eustachio, a stone’s throw from the Pantheon. It opened late because of the funeral, creating a logjam of impatient patrons.

“It was a sign of respect -- we’re Catholics, after all,” manager Giorgio di Cristofano said. “But now we have to catch up.”

Funeral and all, it was just another day on the job for Vito Sonnino, a 37-year-old Roman who makes his living posing for tourist pictures in a gloriously inauthentic gladiator costume of sandals, tunic and plumed helmet.

“We’re trying to keep it a little bit low-key, for the pope,” Sonnino said with a wave of his plastic sword. “But he’d understand -- I’ve got a family to feed.”

With nearly all vehicles but buses and taxis banned in the city center, the customary roar of Rome’s traffic was muted. Fashionable shops were shuttered. School was out for the day.

In the shadow of spectacular Roman ruins and in sprawling cobblestone piazzas, crowds gathered to watch the funeral rites on giant TV screens set up at more than two dozen locations around the city.

At the Colosseum, some tourists were flabbergasted to find the great amphitheater closed and its broad plaza instead filled with pilgrims raptly watching the video feed from St. Peter’s.

“We really thought the Colosseum would stay open to visitors even through this -- after all, it’s the symbol of Rome,” said John Mullen, visiting from Portsmouth, England. But he and his wife, Lesley, ambled into the crowd to watch for a while.

Romans like to walk their dogs in the Circus Maximus, once a chariot racetrack. Some did so as usual Friday, though the grassy valley was dominated by a huge TV screen and scattered with pilgrims’ tents.

Marcello Marini, an Italian actor who lives near the ruin-dotted site, took his black Yorkshire terrier for her customary morning outing but paused a few minutes to listen to the televised homily in tribute to John Paul.

“This pope!” he said with feeling. “He blessed all of us, even the little dogs.”

The papal funeral coincided with the most important Muslim prayers of the week and came a few hours before the start of the Jewish Sabbath. Even so, senior delegations from both faiths attended the Mass.

Noontime prayers at Rome’s main mosque were delayed more than an hour until the imam, Sheik Mahmoud Sheweita, could return from St. Peter’s. But worshipers lingering amid the makeshift souk, or marketplace, that springs up every Friday in front of the mosque said they did not mind the wait.

“We respected this pope as a man of peace,” said Sami Ali, an Egyptian who lives in Rome. “He did everything he could to bring people together.”

At the 19th century Great Synagogue of Rome, some of the worshipers who gathered at dusk to usher in the Jewish Sabbath remembered John Paul’s landmark visit there in 1986, the first ever by a pope.

Jewish leaders said John Paul had done much to heal the centuries-old rift between the Roman Catholic Church and Jews. They pointed to his powerful reconciliatory gestures: his visit to the Auschwitz death camp, his establishment of full Vatican diplomatic relations with Israel, his prayers at Jerusalem’s Western Wall during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2000.

“We will remember him in our prayers,” said Riccardo Pacifici, the vice president of Rome’s Jewish community.

For the cloistered nuns of Santi Quattro Coronati, Friday was a day that began like any other. The Augustinian sisters rose at dawn for prayers in their night-chilled chapel, withdrew to their convent cells for silent meditation, then ate a simple morning meal.

And then they did something extraordinary for members of an “enclosed” order, which shuns contact with the outside world. In straight-backed wooden chairs, they gathered around a rarely used television to watch the funeral.

“We wondered how best to live such a moment,” said Sister Ilaria, who greets the rare visitor through a metal grille at the convent.

“And we felt it was so powerful an event that we should, in our way, participate.”