Powerful and humble gather to bid Pope farewell

PRESIDENTS, prime ministers and kings joined pilgrims and prelates in St Peter’s Square yesterday to bid an emotional farewell to Pope John Paul II at a funeral service that drew millions to Rome for the largest gathering of the powerful and the humble in modern times.

Applause rang out in the wind-whipped square as John Paul's plain cypress coffin, adorned with a cross and an "M" for the Virgin Mary, was brought out from St Peter's Basilica and placed on a carpet in front of the altar. The wind lifted the pages of the Gospel placed on the coffin.

After the Mass ended, bells tolled and 12 pallbearers presented the coffin to the crowd for the last time, and then carried it back inside the basilica for burial again to sustained applause from the hundreds of thousands in the square, including dignitaries from 138 countries.